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Harper's  Magazine 


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HARPER        &        BROTHERS,        PUBLISHERS        •        NEW        Y  O  R  |P(i8/|p 


INDEX 

Volume  216  •  January   1958  .  .  .  June   1958 


A 


Sue- 


a/fie,  Calif. 


Adams,  John  Kay  —  Reforming  Chi- 
cago: Slow  But  Not  Hopeless, 
June  69 

Adolph,  William  H.  —  Fashions  in 
Food,  June  57 

Advertising  Good  for?  What  Is  — 
Martin  Mayer,  Feb.  25 

AETTR  HOURS 

Brown,  Ji.,  Arthur,  Architect,  Mar. 

88 
Camera  Bugs,  May  77 
Uanby,  Edward  T.,  Disc  Jockey,  Mar. 

86 
Challis,  John,  Harpsichords,  June  78 
Churchill  Eisenhower  Art,  Apr.  83 
Disc  Jockey,  Serenade  to  the  Long- 
Haired,  Mar.  8.6 
Garroway,  Dave,  Apr.  80 
Harpsichord  with  the  Forward  Look 

(by  Bernard  Asbell),  June  78 
Jazz,  The  Sound  of,  Feb.  81 
Kentucky  Bourbon,  Jan.  80 
Levittown,  Long  Island,  Feb.  80 
Lively  (For  Once)  Art,  Feb.  81 
Menagerie  at  Versailles  in  1775,    (by 

John  Updike),  May  78 
Moore,  Garry,  June  80 
Movie,  Unwanted,  May  78 
One  Way  to  Get  Elected,  Jan.  79 
Paris  Restaurants,  Apr.  82 
"Pather  Panchali,"  May  78 
Photography,  May  77 
Randolph,  David,  Disk  Jockey,  Mar. 

86 
San      Francisco      Architecture       (by 

Henry  Hope  Reed,  Jr.)  Mar.  88 
Signs  of  the  Times,  June  80 
That  Lived-in  Look,   (by  James  Gal- 
lagher), Feb.  80 
"Today,"  A  Day  with,  Apr.  80 
Wheeler  Mansion  in  Bridgeport,  Jan. 

79 
Whiskey  Business,  Jan.  80 
Young  Old  Trouper,  June  80 

Alimony,  Common  Sense  About  — 
Judge  Samuel  H.  Hofstadter  and 
Arthur  Herzog,  May  68 

Animals  for  Brain,  Breedinc,  Feb. 
32 

Antibiotics:  Too  Much  of  a  Good 
Thing —  Vernon  Knight,  Feb.  60 

ARCHITECTURE 

After  Hours,  Mar.  88 
Levittown,  New  York,  Feb.  80 
Wheeler  Mansion  in  Bridgeport,  Jan. 

79 
Wright  Got  His  Medal,  How  Frank 

Lloyd,  May  30 

Asbell,  Bernard  —  Harpsichord  with 
the  Forward  Look,  June  78 


Ashmore,  Harry  S.  —  The  Untold 
Story  Behind  Little  Rock,  June  10 

ASTRONOMY 

New  Discoveries  About  the  Birth. 
Life  and  Death  of  the  Sun  and 
Other  Stars.  Two  Parts.  Mar.  29; 
Apr.  58 

Atomic  Fallout,  Jan.  48,  Feb.  72 
Australia:    The   Innocent   Conti- 
nent —  D.  W.  Brogan,  June  62 

AUTOMORILES 

Intercontinental,  Jan.  62 
Trailers,  Jan.  71 

AVIATION 

Jet  Air  Liners,  The  New,  June  50 
Barber,     Philip    W.  —  Tom    Wolfe 

Writes  a  Play,  May  71 
Baxter,   James   and  Annette  —  The 

Man    in    the    Blue    Suede    Shoes, 

Jan.  45 

Bendiner,  Alfred  — How  Frank 
Lloyd  Wright  Got  His  Medal, 
May  30 

Bliven,  Bruce  —  San  Francisco:  New 
Serpents  in  Eden,  Jan.  38 

Bloom,  Murray  Teigh  —  What  Two 
Lawyers  Are  Doing  to  Hollywood, 
Feb.  42 

Boat,  Hill  Climbing  by,  May  51 

ROOKS 

Books    in    Brief,    Jan.    90;    Feb.    89; 
Mar.   104;  Apr.  94;  May  91;  June 
90 
New  Books,   Jan.  84;   Feb.  83;   Mar. 

92;  Apr.  84;  May  80;  June  82 
Taylor's  "The  Statesman,"  Sir  Henry, 
Mar.  24 
Britain's  Spirit,  The  Iron  Corset 

on, Jan.  64 
Brogan,  D.  W.  —  Australia:  The  In- 
nocent Continent,  June  62 
Buchwald,  Emilic  Bix  —  Song,  Jan. 

61 
Budapest  String  Quartet  —  Martin 
Mayer,  Mar.  78 

RUSINESS  AND 
ECONOMICS 

Advertising  Good  For?,  What  Is,  Feb. 

25 
Hollywood,  What  Two  Lawyers  Are 

Doing  to,  Feb.  42 
Slump,  Four  Steps  to  Halt  the,  Apr. 

34 


Canadians  Are  Turning  Anti- 
American,  Why  —  Bruce  Hutchi- 
son, May  46 

Canby,  Edward  Tatnall  —  The  New 
Recordings,  Jan.  94;  Feb.  92;  Mar. 
108;  Apr.  100;  May  95;  June  94 

CARTOONS 

Angry  Young  Men  in  Old  Westbury, 

No,  Apr.  71 
Attack  Them,  So  Strong  No   Rival 

Kingdom  Would,  Mar.  44 
Biblical  Scrolls,  Feb.  44 
Brandenburg  Concerto,  Second,  Feb. 

94 
Earth  Is  Blown  Off  Its  Axis,  If  the, 

Apr.  62 
Wolfe  Has  Said  Everything,  Thomas, 

May  74 

Cary,  Joyce  —  Happy  Marriage,  Apr. 
65 

Case  of  the  Furious  Children,  The 
—  Charles  B.  Seib  and  Alan  L. 
Otten,  Jan.  56 

Central  Intelligence  Agency, 
Apr.  46 

Chance  to  Withdraw  Our  Troops 
in  Europe,  A— George  F.  Kennan, 
Feb.  34 

Chicago,  The  Hillbillies  Invade, 
Feb.  64 

Chicago,  Reforming  —  John  Kay 
Adams,  June  69 

CIA:  Who  Watches  the  Watch- 
man? —  Warren  Unna,  Apr.  46 

Clark,  Joesph  S.  —  Notes  on  Polit- 
ical Leaderhsip,  June  23 

Clarke,  Arthur  C.  —  Our  Dumb  Col- 
leagues, Feb.  32;  Standing  Room 
Only,  Apr.  54 

College,  If  Any,  How  to  Choose 
A  -  John  W.  Gardner,  Feb.  49 

Common  Sense  About  Alimony  — 
Hofstadter  and  Herzog,  May  68 

Congress   Honest,   How  to   Keep, 

May  14 

Country  Doctors  Catch  Up  — 
Marion  K.  Sanders,  Apr.  40 

COVER  DESIGNS 

Jan.  —  Merle  Shore 
Feb.  -  Roy  McKie 
Mar.  —  Burt  Goldblatt 
Apr.  —  Burt  Goldblatt 
May  — Alfred  Bendiner 
June  —  Robert  Osborn 


Crabill,  Col.  E.  B.  -  A  Combal  Vel 

(i. in  Sounds  Off,  Apr.   12 

Dialogi  i  or  Freud  &  Jung,  The  — 
Gerald  Sykes,  Mar.  66 

Divorce,  Max  68 

Doctors,  Coun  no  .  Apr.  40 

Donohue,  II.  E.  F.  —  Gentlemen's 
Game,  Mai .  59 

Drucker,  Peter  F.  -  Math  Even  Par- 
ents Can  Understand,  Apr.  7:5 

EASY  CHAIR,  THE 
— John  Fischer 

"Amerii  a,    I  he    I  rouble  with,"  Jan. 

12 
Campaign  Contributions,  May   17 
Combal  Veteran  Sounds  Off,    V    (by 

Col.  E.  B.  Crabill),  April  12 
Congress     Honest,     How     to     Keep, 

May  M 
Conversation  al  Midnight,  Jan.  12 
Eisenhower  Should  Resign,  Feb.  10 
Florian,  Father,  fan.  12 
I  ore<  asi   Eoi    a  ( Iheerful  Springtime, 

Mar.  11 
Intellectual,  Period  ol  the  Respected, 
Mar.  1  1 
Little    Rock,    Untold    Story    Behind 

(by  Harry  S.   ^shmore),  [une  10 
\\  ho's  in  Charge  Hoc:',  Feb.  10 

Engi  ish  Disease,  The  —  Noi  man 
Mat  Kenzie,  Apr.  69 

Falaise  Gap.  The  Guns  at  — Rich- 
ard  11.  McAcloo.  May  36 

Families  on  Wheels  —  Alvin  L. 
Schorr,  Jan.  71 

Fashions  in  Food  -  William  H. 
Adolph,  June  57 

Father  Eugene  and  the  Intelli- 
gence  Services  —  Alexis  Ladas, 
Mar.  72 

FICTION 

Friendly  Talk.  A  —  Storm  Jameson, 
[une  44 

Gentlemen's  Game  — H.  E.  F.  Dono- 
hue, Mar.  59 

(.iiv  in  Waul.  I,  I  lie  —  Leo  Rosten, 
Ma\   60 

Happy    Marriage  —  Joyce  Cary,  Apr. 

65 

Old    Boy    Who   Made  Violins,  An  - 

Hen  Maddow,  Feb.  55 
Waldo  —  Aubrey    Goodman,  Jan.   31 

FILLERS 

\ges  ill    \n\ici\ .  Mar.  77 
Athletic  s  vs.  Sc  ience,  Feb.  IX 
Child-Centered  Home.   June  54 
Chin  I  p.  Rons.  June,  26 
Depression  of  1858,   June  26 
Education,  Elementary,  Ma\  70 
Enlisted   Men  Only,  Foi .  Mar.  71 
Falaise     Cap.     the     Great      Killing 

(.round.  Ma)    15 
Hoboken,   Uranium   Ore  in,   Jan.  41 
Hounds  Across  the  Sea,  fan.  29 


Man   in  Cra\    Flannel   Kimono.    I  he, 

fune  lil 
Model  u    \i  t,  Api .  72 
Nol  with  a  Ban<;.  Feb.  .">.'< 
Protest    1  hat  Coi   Nowhere,  Mar.  36 
Star  from  Foui  to  Five,   I  he,   \pi    5  I 
1  urn  About  Is  Fair  Play,  Apr.  78 
l      S.  Government   and   the   Masses. 

Feb.  63 
Werewolf,"    Films    like    "1    \\  .is    a 

I  een  Age,"  June  32 
Women  and  Slaving  Husbands,  Mar. 

36 

Fischer,  John— 1  he  Easy  Chair,  Jan. 
12;  Feb.  10;  Mar.  14;  Ma)   I  I 

FOOD    Wl>  COOKING 

Fashions  in  Food,  June  57 
Paris  Restaurants,    \pi .  82 

FOREIGN    VFFAIRS 

Australia:  The  Innocent  Continent, 
fune  62 

Canadians  Vre  ["urning  Anti-Ameri- 
can, Max    Hi 

English    Disease    (Boredom).  Apr.  69 

Eugene,  Father,  and  the  Intelligence 
Sen u <s.  Mar.  72 

Europe,  Chance  to  Withdraw  Out 
I  mops  in,  Feb.  34 

West    Recover?,   How   Can   the,   M.n 

39 

Foi  r  Steps  ro  I  Iai  i  the  Slump  — 
Ross  M.  Robertson,  Api    3  I 

Frankenberg,  Lloyd  — A  Refusal  to 
Mom  n,  etc.,  Jan.  47 

Freud  and  Jung,  The  Diai  ogi  i  of, 
Mar.  66 

I  km  \ni  5  I  ai  is.  A  — Storm  Jameson, 
June   11 

Gallagher,  James  —  Levittown,  New 
York,  Feb.  80 

Gang   Thai    Went   Good,    The  — 

Dan  Wake  held,  June  .16 

Gardner,  John  W.  —  How  to  Choose 
a  College,  il  Any,  Feb.  49 

Gentlemen's  Game  —  H.  E.  F. 
Donohue,  Mar.  59 

Germany,  Feb.  34 

Goodman,  Aubrey  —  Waldo.  Jan.  31 

GOVERNMENT  AND   POLITICS 

Campaign  Contributions,  May  17 
Central  Intelligence  Agency,   \pi.   16 
Chicago  Politics,  Some,  June  69 
Congress  Honest,  How  to  Keep,  May 

14 
Eisenhower  Should  Resign,  Feb.  10 
Johnson,  Who  Is  Lyndon,  Mar.  53 
Nixon:    What    Kind    of    President?, 

Jan.  25 
Notes  on   Political   Leadership,   (une 

23 

Graves,    Robert  —  Augeias    and    I. 

June  35 

(day,  George  W.  —  New  Discoveries 
\bout  the  Birth,  Life,  and  Death 
of  the  Sun  and  Other  Stars.  Part  I: 
This  Hydrogen  Universe,  Mar.  29; 


Pari   II:  Stars  Forming,  Burning, 
and  Dying,  Api .  58 

( .Kin.  Martin  I  he  Iron  ( !oi sei 
on  Britain's  Spirit,  Jan.  64 

Guns  \i  Falaisi  Gap,  The  —  Rich- 
ard I).  Mi  \doo.  Ma)   36 

(.is  in  Ward  1,  The  -  Leo  Rosten, 
May  60 

Hammer,  l'hilene  —  And  I  Sav  the 
Hell  with  It.  Feb.  54 

1  I  \i'i'\  Mauri  xi.i  Joxce  ( iaiv.  Api. 
65 

Harper,  Mr.  —  Alter  I  lorn s,  Jan.  79: 
Feb.  80;  Mar.  86;  Apr.  80;  May  77; 
June  78 

Harvard  and  Tom  Wolfe,  Max  71 

Heisenberg,  Wernei  A  Scientist's 
Case  for  the  Classics,  Ma\  25 

Hentoll,  Nat  —  What's  Happening 
to  Jazz,  Apr.  25 

Herzog,  Arthur,  and  Hofstadter, 
Samuel  H.  —  Common  Sense 
About  Alimony,  May  68 

Hill    Climbing    by    Boat  — Joyce 

Warren.  May  51 

Hillbillies   Invadi    Chicago,   The 

—  Albert  N.  Votaw,  Feb.  64 

HISTORY 

Falaise  Cap,   I  he  Guns  at.  May  56 
Minnesota,  Lament  for,  May  57 

Hofstadter,  Samuel  II.  and  Arthur 
Herzog  —  Common  Sense  About 
Alimony,  May  68 

Hollywood,  What  Two  Lawyers 
Are  Doing  to  —  Murray  Teigh 
Bloom,  Feb.  42 

I  low  Frank  Lloyd  Wright  Got  His 
Medal  — Alfred  Bendiner,  May  30 

I  Iouarth,  Herbert  —  Montana:  the 
Frontier  Went   1  hataway,  Mar.  48 

Hughes,  Ted  -  Of  Cats,   June  30 

Hutchison,  Bruce  — Why  Canadians 
Are  Finning  Ami  American,  May 
46 

I  [ydrogen  Unix  erse.  This  —  George 
W  .  Gray,  Mar.  29 

ILLUSTRATORS 

Banlicrrv.    Frederick    F.  —  Australia: 

The  Innocent  Continent,  June  tYJ. 
Bendiner,  Alfred  — How  Frank  Lloyd 

Wright   Got    His   Medal.   Mas    30; 

Senatoi    Joseph  S.  Clark,  June  23; 

May  Cover  Design 
Binion.    Robert  —  Florence:    At    the 

Villa  Jernyngham,  Feb.  68 
Bodecker,  \.  M.  —  After  Hours,  fan. 

7');  Feb.  80;  Mar.  86;  Apr.  80;  Max 

77;  June  7X;    I  he  Easy  Chair,  fan,. 

I  I;  May  1  1 
Bryson,     Bernarda   -    I  he    Guv    in 

Ward  4,  May  60 
Cleveland,   Anne  —The  Work  Cure 

for  Women,  Apr.  33 


Gober,  Alan  —  Happy  Marriage,  Apr. 

65 
Domanska,    Janina  —  The    Old    Boy 

Who  Made  Violins,  Feb.  55 
Goldblatt,    Burt  —  Guns    at    Falaise 

Gap,  May  36;  What's  Happening 

to  Jazz,  Apr.  25;  March  and  April 

Cover  Designs 
Goodman,  Willard  —  Montana,  Mar. 

48 
Greenwald,     Sheila  —  Families     on 

Wheels,  Jan.  71 
Higgins,  Donald  —  Univac  to  Univac, 

Mar.  37 
Jones,  G.  Hunter  —  Budapest  String 

Quartet,  Mar.  78 
Keogh,  Tom  — A  Friendly  Talk,  June 

44 
Kuskin,    Karla  —  Fashions    in    Food, 

June  57 
Lloyd,    Peggy  —  Gentlemen's    Game, 

Mar.  59 
McDowell,    Barrie  — Hill    Climbing 

by  Boat,  May  51 
McKie,    Roy  —  What    Is   Advertising 

Good   for?,   Feb.   25;    Our   Dumb 

Colleagues,  Feb.  32;  .Letters  Col- 
umn, Mar.  4;  Easy  Chair,  Apr.  12; 

February  Cover  Design 
Mindell,  M.  T.  —  Father  Eugene  and 

the  Intelligence  Services,  Mar.  72 
Muni  —  Reforming  Chicago,  June  69 
Osborn,    Robert  —  Lyndon   Johnson, 

Mar.  55;  Lunar  World  of  Groucho 

Marx,  June  31;  June  Cover  Design 
Shahn,  Ben  —  Voyage  of  the  Lucky 

Dragon,  Jan.  48;  Feb.  72 
Shore,    Merle  —  San    Francisco,    Jan. 

38;  Jan.  Cover  Design 
Ungerer,  Tomi    —    Intercontinental, 

Jan.  62;  Standing  Room  Only,  Apr. 

54;  Easy  Chair,  Jan.  12 
Volk,   Vic  —  Country   Doctors  Catch 

Up,  Apr.  40 
Walker,    Charles    W.  —  Gang    That 

Went  Good,  June   36;   Hillbillies 

Invade  Chicago,  Feb.  64 
Wyatt,  Stanley  —  Waldo,  Jan.  31 

Intellectual,  Period  of  the  Re- 
spected American,  Mar.  14 

Intercontinental  —  Tomi  Ungerer, 
Jan.  62 

Iron  Corset  on  Britain's  Spirit, 
The  —  Martin  Green,  Jan.  64 

Jackson,  Katherine  Gauss  —  Books 
in  Brief,  Jan.  90;  Feb.  89;  Mar. 
104;  Apr.  94;  May  91;  June  90 

Jameson,  Storm  —  A  Friendly  Talk, 
June  44 

Japanese  Fishermen  and  Atomic 
Fallout,  Jan.   18;  Feb.  72 

Jazz  Notes  —  Eric  Larrabee,  May 
90;  June  96 

Jazz,  What's  Happening  to  —  Nat 
Hentoff,  Apr.  25 

Jet  Air  Liners,  The  New  —  Wolf- 
gang Langewiesche,  June  50 

Johnson?,  Who  Is  Lyndon  — Wil- 
liam S.  White,  Mar.  53 

Jung  and  Freud,  The  Dialogue  of, 
Mar.  66 


Juvenile  Delinquency,  Jan.  56; 
June  36 

Kennan,  George  F.  —  A  Chance  to 
Withdraw  Our  Troops  in  Europe, 
Feb.  34;  How  Can  the  Wc>t  Re- 
cover, Mar.  39 

King,  Lorna  Jean  —  The  Work  Cure 
for  Women,  Apr.  33 

Knight,  Vernon  —  Antibiotics:  Too 
Much  of  a  Good  Thing?,  Feb.  60 

Ladas,  Alexis  —  Father  Eugene  and 
the  Intelligence  Services,  Mar.  72 

Lament  for  Minnesota  —  Leona 
Train  Rienow,  May  57 

Langewiesche,  Wolfgang— The  New 
Jet  Air  Liners,  June  50 

Lapp,  Ralph  —  The  Voyage  of  the 
Lucky  Dragon,  Parts  II  and  III, 
Jan.  48;  Feb.  72 

Larrabee,  Eric  —  Jazz  Notes,  May 
96;  June  96 

Lattimore,  Richmond  —  The  Aca- 
demic Overture,  May  50 

LETTERS 

Jan.  6;  Feb.  4;  Mar.  4;  Apr.  6;  May 
4;  June  4 

Little  Rock,  Untold  Story  Behind 

—  Harry  S.  Ashmore,  June  10 

Los  Angeles  Architecture,  Mar.  90 

Lucky  Dragon,  The  Voyage  of  the, 
Jan.  48;  Feb.  72 

Lunar  World  of  Groucho  Marx, 
The  —  Leo  Rosten,  June  31 

MacKenzie,  Norman  —  The  English 
Disease,  Apr.  69 

Maddow,  Ben -An  Old  Boy  Who 
Made  Violins,  Feb.  55 

Man  in  the  Blue  Suede  Shoes,  The 

—  James  and  Annette  Baxter,  Jan. 

45 

Marx,  The  Lunar  World  of 
Groucho  —  Leo  Rosten,  June  31 

Math  Even  Parents  Can  Under- 
stand —  Peter  F.  Drucker,  Apr.  73 

Mayer,  Martin— The  Budapest 
Siring  Quartet,  Mar.  78;  What  Is 
Advertising  Good  For?,  Feb.  25 

McAdoo,  Richard  B.  —  The  Guns  at 
Falaise  Gap,  May  36 

MEDICAL  SCIENCE 

Antibiotics,  Feb.  60 

Country  Doctors  Catch  Up,  Apr.  40 

Minnesota,  Lament  for  —  Leona 
Train  Rienow,  May  57 

Montana:  The  Frontier  Went 
Thataway  —  Herbert  Howarlh, 
Mar.  48 

Movie  Industry,  Revolution  in 
the,  Feb.  42 


MUSIC 

Budapest  String  Quartet,  Mar.  78 
Disk  Jockey,  Long-Haired,  Mar.  86 
Harpsichord  with  the  Forward  Look, 

June  78 
Jazz  Notes,  May  95;  June  96 
"Jazz,  The  Sound  of,"  Feb.  81 
Jazz,  What's  Happening  to,  Apr.  25 
Presley,  Elvis,  Jan.  45 
Record    Review    Column,    Jan.    94; 

Feb.  92;  Mar.  108;  Apr.  100;  May 

95;  June  94 

National  Institutes  of  Health 
Center,  Jan.  56 

NATO,  Feb.  34;  Mar.  39 

NEGRO,  THE 

Untold  Story  Behind  Little  Rock, 
June  10 

NEW  ROOKS,  THE 

Paul  Pickrel,  Jan.  84;  Feb.  83;  Mar. 
92;  Apr.  84;  May  80;  June  82 

New  Discoveries  About  the  Birth, 
Life  and  Death  of  the  Sun  and 
Other  Stars  —  George  W.  Gray. 
Part  I:  This  Hydrogen  Universe, 
Mar.  29;  Part  II:  Stars  Forming, 
Burning,  Dying,  Apr.  58 

New  Jet  Air  Liners,  The  —  Wolf- 
gang Langewiesche,  June  50 

NEW  RECORDINGS,  THE 

Edward  Tatnall  Canby,  Jan.  94;  Feb. 
92;  Mar.  108;  Apr.  100;  May  95; 
June  94 

Nixon:  What  Kind  of  President? 
-  William  S.  White,  Jan.  25 

Notes  on  Political  Leadership  — 
Joseph  S.  Clark,  June  23 

Old  Boy  Who  Made  Violins,  An  — 
Ben  Maddow,  Feb.  55 

Otten,  Alan,  and  Charles  B.  Seib — 
Case  of  the  Furious  Children,  Jan. 
56 

Our  Dumb  Colleagues  —  Arthur  C. 
Clarke,  Feb.  32 

Paris  Restaurants,  Apr.  82 

PEOPLE 

Adolph,  William  H.,  June  20 
Benjamin,     Robert     S.,     Hollywood 

lawyer,  Feb.  42 
Challis,  John,  Modern  Harpsichords, 

June  78 
Dulles,   Allen   Welsh,   Director  CIA, 

Apr.  46 
Eisenhower,  Pres.,  Feb.  10 
Eugene,  Father,  Mar.  72 
Freud,  Sigmund,  Mar.  66 
Johnson,  Lyndon,  Mar.  53 
Jung,  Mar.  66 
Krim,  Arthur  B.,  Hollywood  lawyer, 

Feb.  42 
Marx,  Groucho,  Entertainer,  June  31 
McCarthy,  Senator  Joseph,  Jan.  26 
Moore,  Garry,  TV  performer,   June 

80 
Nixon,   Richard   M.,   Vice-President, 

Jan.  25;  Feb.  10 
Presley,  Elvis,  Entertainer,  Jan.  45 


Rcdl,  Dr.  Fritz,  Croup  therapist,  Jan. 

56 
Wolfe  1  homas,  writer,  May  71 
Wright,  Frank  Lloyd,  architect,  May 

30 

PERSONAL  &  OTHERWISE 

Adolph,  Dr.  William  H..  June  20 
Bound  lor  the  Eternal  Showers?.  Feb. 

20 
Classical  Languages,  May  21 
Lifeline.  June  20 
Pointers  for  Spies.  Apr.  20 
San  Franciscans,    I  he  New.  Jan.  21 
Statesmen,  Guide  for.  Mar.  24 
Taylor's  "  The  Statesman,"  Mar.  24 
Uncertainty  Principle,  May  21 

Philadelphia  Politics.  June  23 

Pickrel,  Paul— The  New  Books, 
Jan.  84;  Feb.  83;  Mar.  92;  Apr.  84; 
May  80;  June  82 

Play  Writing  and  Tom  Wolfe, 
May  71 

POETRY 

Academic  Overture,  The— Richmond 
Lattimore,  May  50 

And  I  Say  the  Hell  with  It  —  Philene 
Hammer.  Feb.  54 

Augeias  and  1  —  Robert  Graves,  June 
35 

Dunce's  Song— Mark  Van  Doren, 
Mar.  32 

Exchange  —  Miriam  Waddington, 
May  58 

Fable  for  Blackboard  —  George  Star- 
buck.  June  52 

Florence:  At  the  Villa  Jernyngham  — 
Osbert  Sitwell,  Feb.  68 

For  a  25th  Birthday  —  Thomas  Whit- 
bread,  Mar.  84 

Of  Cats -Ted  Hughes,  June  30 

Platform  Before  the  Castle  — Anne 
Goodwin  Winslow,  Apr.  38 

Refusal  to  Mourn,  Etc.  —  Lloyd 
Frankenbcrg,  Jan.  47 

Return  of  the  Native  — James  Rorty, 
Apr.  57 

Rural  Reflections  —  Adrienne  Rich, 
Mar.  57 

Song  —  Emilie  Bix  Buchwald,  Jan.  61 

Univac  to  Univac  — Louis  B.  Salo- 
mon. Mar.  37 

Politics,  Sec  Government  and  Pol- 
itics 

Population,  World,  Apr.  54 

Presley,  Elvis,  Jan.  45 

Psychoanalysis,  Mar.  06 

Puerto  Rican  Gangs  in  Harlem, 
June  36 

Recession,  Four  Steps  to  Halt  the, 
Apr.  34 

RECORDINGS,  THE  NEW 

Edward  Tatnall  Canby,  Jan.  94; 
Feb.  92;  Mar.  108;  Apr.  100;  May 
95;  June  95 

Reed.  Jr.,  Henry  Hope  — San  Fran 
cisco  Architecture,  Mar.  88 

Reforming  Chicago  —  John  Kay 
Adams,  June  69 


RELIGION 

lather  Eugene  and  the  Intelligence 
Services,  Mar.  72 

Rich,  Adrienne  —  Rural  Reflections, 
Mar.  57 

Rienow,  Leona  Train  —  Lament  lor 

Minnesota,  Max   57 

Robertson.  Ross  M.  —  Four  Sups  to 
Halt  the  Slump.  Apr.  34 

Root,   Waverly  —  Paris  Restaurants, 

Apr.  82 

Rorty.  James  —  Return  oi  the  Na- 
tive, Apr.  57 

Rosten,  Leo  — The  Guy  in  Ward  I. 
M.i\  00:  The  Lunar  World  of 
Groucho  Marx,  fune  5 1 

Salomon.  Louis  B.  —  Univac  to  LJni- 
vac,  Mar.  37 

Sanders.  Marion  K.  —  Country  Doc- 
tors Catch  Up,  Apr.  40 

San  Francisco  Architecture,  Mar. 

88 

San  Francisco:  New  Serpents  in 
Eden  —  Bruce  Bliven,  Jan.  38 

Schorr,  Alvin  L.  —  Families  on 
Wheels,  Jan.  71 

SCIENCE  AND  INVENTION 

Education  of  a  Scientist,  May  25 

Scientist's  Case  for  the  Classics,  A 
—  Werner  Heisenberg,  May  25 

Seib,  Charles  B.  and  Alan  L.  Otten 
-  The  Case  ol  the  Furious  Chil- 
dren, Jan.  56 

Sitwell,  Osbert  —  Florence:  At  the 
Villa  Jernyngham,  Feb.  68 

Slump,  Four  Steps  to  Halt  the  — 
Ross  M,  Robertson,  Apr.  34 

Southern  Hillbillies  Invade  Chi- 
cago, Feb.  6  1 

SOVIET  RUSSIA 

Chance  to  Withdraw  Our  Troops  in 

Europe.  A,  Feb.  34 
West    Recover?.   How  Can   the.  Mar. 

39 

Standing  Room  Only  —  Arthur  C. 
Clarke,  Apr.  54 

Starbuck,  George  —  Fable  for  Black- 
board, June  52 

Stars  Forming,  Burning,  Dying  — 
George  W.  Gray,  Apr.  58 

Sykes,  Gerald  — The  Dialogue  of 
Freud  and  Jung,  Mar.  66 

Teen-Age  Gang  Changes  Its  Ways, 
June  36 

TELEVISION 

Bound  for  the  Eternal  Showers?,  Feb. 

20 
"Jazz,    I  he  Sound  of,"  Feb.  81 
Moore,  Garry.  June  80 
"  roday,"  Apr.  80 

Trailer  Families.  Jan.  71 


Two  Hundred  Inch  Palomar  Tele- 
scope, Mar.  29 

Ungerer,  Tomi  —  Intercontinental, 

Jan.  62 

United  Artists,  Feb.  12 

UNITED  STATES 

Chicago.  Southern  Hillbillies  Invade, 

Feb.  (il 
Chicago,  Reforming,  June  09 
Little    Rock.    Untold   Story    Behind. 

June  10 
Minnesota,  Lament  Eor,  Ma)  57 
Montana,  Mai.  is 

Universe,   This  Hydrogen,  Mar.  29 

Unna.  Warren -CIA;  Who  Watches 
the  Watchman?,  Apr.   16 

Updike,  John— The  Menagerie  at 
Versailles  in  1775,  May  78 

Van    Doren.    Mark  —  Dunce's  Song, 

Mar.  32 

Veteran  Sounds  Oil,  A  Combat  — 
Col.  E.  B.  Crabill,  Apr.  12 

Votaw,  Albert  N.  —  The  Hillbillies 
Invade  Chicago,  Feb.  64 

Voyage  oi  mi  Lucky  Dragon,  The 
-  Ralph  E.  Lapp,  Jan.  48;  Feb.  72 

Waddington,  Miriam  —  Exchange, 

May  58 

Wakefield,  Dan  -  The  Gang  That 
Went  Good,  June  36 

Waldo  —  Aubrey  Goodman,  Jan.  31 

Warren,  Joyce  —  Hill  Climbing  by 
Boat,  May  51 

West  Recover?,  How  Can  the  — 
George  F.  Kennan,  Mar.  39 

What  Is  Advertising  Good  For?  — 
Martin  Mayer,  Feb.  25 

What's  Happening  to  Jazz  —  Nat 
Hentoff,  Apr.  25 

Whitbread,  Thomas  —  For  a  25th 
Birthday,  Mar.  84 

White,  William  S.  -  Nixon:  What 
Kind  of  President?,  Jan.  25;  Who 
Is  Lyndon  Johnson?,  Mar.  53 

Who  Is  Lyndon  Johnson?— William 
S.  White,  Mar.  53 

Winslow,  Anne  Goodwin— Platform 
Before  the  Castle,  Apr.  38 

Wolie  Writes  a  Play,  Tom  — 
Philip  W.  Barber,  May  71 

Work  Cure  for  Women,  The  — 
Lorna  Jean  King,  Apr.  33 

WORLD  WAR  II 

Guns  at  Falaise  Gap,  The,  May  36 

Wright  Got  His  Medal,  How 
Frank  Lloyd  —  Alfred  Bendiner, 
May  30 

WRITING  AND  PUBLISHING 

Books,  See  under 

Tom  Wolfe  Writes  a  Play,  May  71 


SIXTY  CENTS 


ESIDENT? 

William  S.  White 


Elvis:  The  Man  in  the 
Blue  Suede  Shoes 

James  and  Annette  Baxter 

The  Case  of  the 
Furious  Children 

Charles  B.  Seib  and 
Alan  L.  Otten 

The  Iron  Corset  on 
Britain's  Spirit 

Martin  Green 

Families  on  Wheels 

Alvin  L  Schorr 


SAN  FRANCISCO: 
NEW  SERPENTS 


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DEWARS 

White  Label 

and  ANCESTOR 
SCOTCH  WHISKIES 


Famed  are  the  clans  of  Scotland 
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through  the  centuries.  Famous,  too, 
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She  helps  people  find  the  products  and  services  they  want.  Mrs.  Vonna  Lou  Shelton,  telephone  representative 
in  Minneapolis,   Minn.,  checks  the  advertisements  that  business  men  have  placed  in  the  classified  directory. 


PHOTOGRAPHS  BY   ANSEL  ADAMS 


159144 
This  telephone  girl  is  a  big  help  to  businesses 


When  you  think  of  a  telephone  wo- 
man you  probably  think  of  the  opera- 
tor. But  there  are  many  other  women 
at  the  telephone  company  who  do 
important  jobs  for  you.  And  they, 
too,  have  the  "Voice  with  a  Smile." 

For  example,  Vonna  Lou  Shelton 
handles  a  very  necessary  service  in 
the  business  man's  world.  She  is  one 
of  many  women  throughout  the  coun- 
try who  help  different  concerns  plan 
and  place  their  advertising  in  tele- 
phone directory  Yellow  Pages. 

Friendliness,  good  judgment,  and 
follow-through  have  won  for  Mrs. 
Shelton  the  confidence  of  business 
men  who  appreciate  quick,  competent 
service  and  painstaking  efficiency. 


Vonna  Lou's  life  is  filled  with  peo- 
ple. Among  her  principal  off-the-job 
interests  are  her  husband  and  Sun- 
day School  class. 

She's  a  program  chairman  of  a 
missionary  society.  Sparks  many  a 
fund-raising  campaign.  Goes  to  col- 
lege to  study  piano  and  takes  lessons 
to  improve  her  golf. 

Like  so  many  folks  in  the  tele- 
phone company,  Mrs.  Shelton  has 
made  a  lot  of  friends— on  her  own, 
and  on  the  job. 

"I  don't  know  of  any  other  work," 
she  says,  "that  would  bring  me  so 
close  to  all  my  neighbors.  Our  cus- 
tomers get  to  think  of  us  as  their  per- 
sonal representatives.  I  like  that  a  lot." 


She  has  a  loyal  following  in  the  "younger 
set."  Mrs.  Shelton  has  a  ivay  with  the 
children  of  the  neighborhood  which  in- 
spires a  faithful  attendance  at  her  class 
in  Sunday  School. 


YEUOW  PAGES 


Working  together  to  bring  people  together  ...  BELL   TELEPHONE    SYSTEM 


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ii  Mii'i  ii 's  m  m.  wine  issue  for 

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VOL.    216,    NO.    1292 


ARTICLES 

25     Nixon:  What  Kind  of  President?,   William  S.  White 

38     San    Francisco:    New   Serpents   in    Eden,   Bruce   Bliven 
Map  by  Merle  shore 

45     Tin    \l  \n  in   mi    r,i  i  i   Si  nil   Shoes, 
James  and  Annette  Baxter 

48     The  Voi  u.i  <>i    mi   Luck\   Dragon,  Pari  II, 
Ralph  E.  Lapp 
Drawings  by  Hen  Shahn 

56      Tin   Casi  oi    mi    Furious  Children,  Charles  B.  Seib 
and  Alan   L.  Otten 

62     The  Intercontinental,  Tomi  Lingerer 

64     Tin:    Iron    Corsei    on    Britain's   Spirit,    Martin    Green 

71     Families  on  Whims,  Alvin  L.  Schorr 
Drawings   by  Sheila    Greenwald 

FICTION 

31     Waldo,  Aubrey  Goodman 

Drawings  by  SI  an  ley   Wyatt 

VERSE 

47     A  Refusal  to  Mourn,  etc.,  Lloyd  Erankenberg 
61     Song,  Einilie  Bix  Buchwald 

DEPARTMENTS 

6     Letters 

12     The  Editor's  Easy  Chair— Conversation  at  Midnight, 
John  Fischer 

Drawing  by  Tomi  Ungerer 

21      Personal  R;  Otherwise:  Among  Our  Contributors 

79     After  Hours,  Mr.  Harper 
Drawings  by  N.  M.  Bodecker 

84     The  New  Books,  Paul  Pickrel 

90     Books  in  Brief,  Katherine  Gauss  Jackson 

94     The  New  Recordings,  Edward  Tatnall  Canby 

COVER  by  Merle  Shoie 


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LETTERS 


Moses:  Attack  and  Defense 


To  the  Editors: 

"The  Civil  Defense  Fiasco"  [Nov.]  by 
Robert  Moses  was  a  disturbing  article. 
.  .  .  The  most  alarming  trend  in  the 
current  situation  is  that  we  arc  rapidly 
approaching  a  condition  in  America, 
and  probably  in  Russia,  in  which  less 
than  one  per  cent  of  the  national  popu- 
lation would  survive  an  all-out  orgy  of 
nuclear  and  biological  warfare.  .  .  .  It 
takes  quite  a  sophisticated  shelter  to 
withstand  100  psi  overpressure,  2.000 
r/hr.  fallout,  and  fifty  different  kinds  of 
disease  germs.  However,  some  of  these 
shelters  are  in  existence  for  parts  of  the 
military,  high  government  officials,  and 
certain     industrial     installations.     .     .     . 

Human  nature  being  what  it  is,  it  re- 
quires no  stretch  of  the  imagination  to 
realize  that  an  American  or  Russian 
official  or  commander  is  going  to  be 
much  less  hesitant  about  engaging  in 
nuclear  war  if  he  knows  that  he  per- 
sonally, and  his  family,  arc  going  to 
come  out  of  it  alive.  In  fact  it  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  the  possibility  that  his 
"pioneering"  instinct  will  be  aroused 
and  that  he  will  subconsciously  have  vi- 
sions of  himself  and  a  lew  thousand 
others  inheriting  a  waiting  and  unin- 
habited world,  completely  to  them- 
selves. .  .  .  This  is  known  as  the  Noah's 
Ark  complex.  Jim   Deer 

Portland,   Oregon 

Commissioner  Robert  Moses  .  .  - 
makes  a  number  of  demonstrably  in- 
valid statements  which  display  his  utter 
lack  of  awareness  of  the  basis  and  rea- 
soning underlying  civil  defense  think- 
ing and  the  proposals  of  the  Holifield 
Committee.  (.  .  .  highly  qualified  ex- 
perts suggest  that  the  adoption  of  the 
Holifield  proposals  would  give  people 
in  the  center  of  the  aiming  area  in  Los 
Angeles,  perhaps  our  most  vulnerable 
large  city,  96  chances  out  ol  100  of 
survival.) 

.  .  .  Mr.  Moses'  real  concern  appears 
to  be  merely  that  adequate  civil  defense 
would  upset  our  present  procedures; 
possibly  Ethelred  the  Unready  rejected 
the  counsel  of  those  advisers  who  sug- 
gested that  some  measure  of  prepared- 
ness would  be  wise  on  the  same  grounds. 
.  But  both  deserve  to  Ik-  called 
irresponsible  because  they  wotdd  not  see 


foreign  policy  as  interdependent  with 
home  defense. 

Moses  even  misunderstands  the  entire 

purpose  of  civil  defense:  he  says  it  is 
supposed  to  terrify  the  Russians;  of 
course,  ii  is  not  supposed  to  do  any- 
thing ol  the  sort;  ii  is  supposed  i ake 

it  harder  lor  the  Russians  lo  terrify  us 
(and  if  we  are  huk\.  perhaps  make  it 
less  necessary  for  us  to  try  to  terrif) 
them,  thus  reducing  the  likelihood  of 
war  through  simple  miscalculation)  .... 

ROBl  RT   MARDEN   and    LEWIS  A.  DEXTER 

Civil  Defense    Vgency, 

Commonwealth  ol    Massachusetts 

Hurrah  for  Robert  Moses!  I  think 
the  public  apathy  toward  civil  defense 
he  mentions  is  obviously  a  result  of  the 
fact  that  people  have  realized  lor  a 
long  time  that  most  civil  defense  plans 
wouldn't   work.    .    .   . 

Hi  try  Lou   Frost 
Long  Beach,  Calif. 

Robert  Moses  incorrectly  named  the 
Federal  Civil  Defense  Administration 
as  "chief  sponsor"  of  HR  2125,  which 
would  authorize  a  national  shelter  pro- 
gram, and  ciilici/ed  this  ageno  for 
making  such  a  proposal.  Actually, 
FCDA's  legislative  proposals  are  con- 
tained in  HR  7570.  which  was  passed 
by  the  House  of  Representatives  during 
the  last  session  of  Congress  and  is 
scheduled  lor  Senate  consideration  in 
the  coming  session.  This  bill  contains 
provisions  which  we  believe  will 
strengthen  and  modernize  the  national 
civil  deiense  structure.  .  .  . 

HR  7576  does  not  provide  tor  a 
national  shelter  program.  Much  re- 
search on  a  shelter  program  has  been 
conducted,  however,  and  the  Executive 
Branch  ol  the  government  has  given 
and  is  continuing  to  give  this  subject 
considerable    study. 

Leo  A.   Hoegh 

Federal  Civil  Defense  Administration 
Washington,  D.  C. 


Historical    Note 

A    star    lell    on    a    small    town 
In  oui    State— 

"Fell    on     Alabama"    as    it    were. 
It   was   not    the   lust    time 

(There's    a    song    by    the    same    name) 
Jim    it    is   the    lust   time   a   star 
lln    a   woman. 

\nd     she     had     bruises    and     contusions 
To  show   for   it. 

She    was    only    a     tenant    on     the    place 

Where    the    star    lell 

And    the   owner   claimed   it   as 

His    property    when    he    arrived; 

He  looked  about,  sheepish  and 

important 
Since    no    one    had    ever   before 
Found    a    star   on    his   place. 

It  made  the  woman  angry,  so  she 
Sued    lor   damages— "See    this    scar?" 
I;    has  not    yet   been   settled 
For   there    seemed    to    be   no   precedent 
In    the   law-courts  for  damages 
Even   to  a  woman,  victim  of  a 
lading    star    .    .    . 

Lulie  Hard  McKinley 
Birmingham,  Alabama 


Falling  Stars 

To  the  Editors: 

Poets  respond,  as  a  rule,  to  the  same 
stimuli,  so  it  is  not  altogether  surpris- 
ing for  a  poet  to  find  his  sentiments 
expressed  by  another  poet.  ...  I  read 
with  delight  William  Stafford's  "Star  in 
the  Hills"  in  the  November  Harper's, 
more  particularly  as  it  seemed  to  be  in 
the  same  mood  as  my  lines  that  follow. 
Let  us  have  more  of  Mr.  Stafford,  please. 


Inhabited  Stars? 

To  the  Editors: 

Mr.  Clarke  asks  "Where's  Everybody?". 
The  answer  should  be  obvious.  As  the 
civilizations  on  other  planets  passed  a 
few  years  beyond  our  present  stage  of 
A-bombs  and  H-bombs,  rockets  and 
missiles,  they  blew  themselves  to  bits. 
That's  where  everybody  is. 

Nelson  R.  Eldred 
South    Charleston,   West    Va. 

A  slight  correction  should  be  made 
to  Arthur  C.  Clarke's  delightful  article. 
Einstein's  Theory  of  Special  Relativity, 
which  postulates  the  speed  of  light  to 
be  the  maximum  speed  attainable  by 
anything,  also  states  that  a  traveler  who 
wants  to  reach  a  star,  say,  five  light- 
years  away,  can  get  there  by  his  own 
standards,  in  a  time  less  than  five  years. 
The  catch  is  that  the  scale  of  time  is 
different  lor  an  earthbound  observer 
looking  at  the  spaceship  and  for  a 
passenger  traveling  in  the  spaceship. 
In  fact,  il  the  spaceship  travels  at  600 
million  miles  per  hour,  it  will  reach  the 
star  five  light-years  away  in  a  time 
which  will  be  only  two  years  for  the 
passenger,  although  it  will  be  a  little 
over  five  years  when  measured  by  an- 
other observer  stationed  on  the  earth. 
Similarly,  traveling  at  663  million  miles 
an  hour,  the  spaceship  will  reach  the 
same  star  in  nine  months  if  time  is 
measured  by  one  of  its  passengers.  Thus 
there     is     no    limit    set    by     the    finite 


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LETTERS 

human  life  span  on  the  distance  which 
can   be   explored   in   space. 

Mil  HAEL     |.    MORAVCSIK 

Patchogue,  New  Yoi  k 

This  is  correct,  and  I've  developed 
the  idea  in  many  other  articles  and 
stories,  hm  I  felt  "Where's  Everybody" 
was  already  long  enough  without  getting 
into  Relativity!  Arthur  C.  Ci  \kki. 
New  York,  N.  V. 


Observed  Stars 

To  the  Editors: 

In  "Inside  Samarkand"  in  your  No- 
vember issue.  John  Gunther  lists, 
among  the  sights  ol  that  eit\:  "The 
Observatorv  .  .  .  built  by  the  Emperor 
Mir/a  Ulugbek  .  .  .  [is]  indication  that, 
even  in  Central  Asia  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  men  had  lively  scientific  minds 
and  did  useful  work."  "Useful  work" 
indeed!  Tin's  is  inexcusably  faint  praise 
for  a  man  who  was  using  a  telescope 
almost  200  years  before  Galileo  invented 
that   instrument.  Ilium  ki    L.  Cross 

Dayton,   Ohio 


Battle  of  Copenhagen 

To  the  Editors: 

It  is  surprising  to  find  so  accomplished 
a  raconteur  as  Sir  Harold  Nicolson 
mangling  one-  ol  the  famous  anecdotes 
>l  English  naval  history.  But  he  does 
exactly  this  when  he  remarks  in  the 
November  Harper's  [Easy  Chair]:  "It 
i^  said  that  Nelson,  when  about  to 
destroy  the  Danish  fleet  at  Copenhagen, 
placed  his  telescope  to  his  blind  e\c-  in 
order  not  to  see-  the  signals  ol  surrender 
which    fluttered    from    their    masts." 

Mahan  tells  the  story,  quoting  the 
narrative  ol  I.t.  Col.  William  Stewart 
in  his  Life  <>\  Nelson.  Nelson  at  Copen- 
hagen was  second  in  command  to  Sir 
Hyde  Parker  and  commanded  the  de- 
tached squadron  while  Sir  Hyde's  main 
body  stood  by  to  the  north.  Success 
not  coming  easily.  Sir  Hyde  determined 
to  break  oil  the  action,  and  signaled 
accordingly.  "When  the  signal.  No.  39, 
was  madc\  the  Signal  Lieutenant  re- 
ported it  to  Lord  Nelson.  He  con- 
tinued  his  walk,  and  did   not  appear   to 

take   notice  of  it \lter  a    turn   or 

two.  he  said  to  me  in  a  cjuick  manner, 
'Do  you  know  what's  shown  on  board 
the  Commander-in-Chief  No.  39?'  On 
asking  him  what  he  meant,  he  answered, 
'Why,  to  leave  oil  action.'  'Leave  off 
action,'  he  repeated  and  then  added 
with  a  shrug.  Now  damn  me  ii  I  do!' 
He  also  observed,  I  believe  to  Captain 
Foley,  You  know,  Foley,  I  have  only 
one    eye— I    have    a    right    to    be    blind 


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LBS  SYLPH  I  DBS 


BtTDOLF  MKHKiW 
BEETHOVEN 

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REX  HARRISON  * 
JULIE  ANDREWS 
LADY 


Original 

BmtKfwiy 
Orel 


Two  delightful  and  ro- 
mantic ballet  scores  by 
Offenbach    and    Chopin 


Definitive  performances 
of  three  best-loved 
Beethoven  sonatas 


Johnny  Mathis  sings  12 
favorites  —  Day  In  Day 
Out,  Old  Black  Magic,  etc. 


Erroll  Garner  plays  Car- 
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Memories  of  You,   etc. 


Tenderly,  Deep  Purple, 
Soon,  Laura,  September 
In   The   Rain,   7  others 


Complete  score!  I  Could 
Have  Danced  All  Night, 
The  Rain  In  Spain,  etc. 


7  exciting  new  jazz  im- 
provisations by  two 
great  modern  combos 


EDDY  DUCHIN 
STORY 


ORIGINAL  DUCHIN  RECORDINGS 


Duchin  plays  The  Man  I 
Love,  April  Showers,  Am 
I  Blue?,  Brazil— 11  more 


AMBASSADOR  SATCH 


LOUS 

I  ARMSTRONG 


Suave  arrangements  of 
Embraceable  You,  Some- 
body Loves  Me— 12  more 


The  Moon  of  Manakoora, 
Lotus  Land,  Poinciana, 
Jamaican  Rhumba,  etc. 


PORTS  OF  CALL 

RAVEL:  BOLERO.  LA  VALSE.  PAVANE  ' 
CHABRIER:  ESPANAIBERT:  ESCALES 
DEBUSSY:  CLAIR  OE  LURE        I 


Armstrong  and  his  All- 
Stars.  10  numbers  from 
triumphant  tour  abroad 


STRAVINSKY: 
FIREBIRD  SUITE  i 
TCHAIKOVSKY:  i 
ROMEO  AND  JULIET !  . 
LEONARD  BERNSTEIN 
NEW  YORK  PHILHARMONIC 


Stunning  hi-fi  perform- 
ances of  the  "Firebird" 
and  "Romeo  and  Juliet" 


Oklahoma! 

Nelson  Eddy 

Complete  Score 


LEVANT  PLAYS  GERSHWIN 

RHAPSODY 

IN  BLUE! 


CONCERTO  t 
AN  AMERICAN  IN  PASIS  , 


Doris  Day  sings  The  Song 
Is  You,  But  Not  For  Me, 
Autumn  Leaves-9  more 


Emperor  Waltz, Blue  Dan- 
ube, Vienna  Life,  Gypsy 
Baron  Overture-2  more 


12  Sinatra  favorites  — 
Mad  About  You,  Love 
Me,  Nevertheless,  etc. 


A  romantic  musical  tour 
-Ormandy  and  The  Phil- 
adelphia Orchestra 


Rodgers  &  Hammer- 
stein's  fabulous  hit,  with 
Nelson  Eddy  as  Curly 


3  Gershwin  works— Con- 
certo in  F,  Rhapsody  in 
Blue,  American  in  Paris 


ROMANTIC  MELODIES  FROM: 
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5TH  SYMPHONY.  NUTCRACKER  SUITE. 
QUARTET  IN  D.  SYMPHONY  PATHETIQUE, 
MARCHE  SLAV.  SERENADE  FOR  STRINGS 


'1 

SUDDENLY 
IT'S 

1  HI  I 
r  LO'S  1 

K 

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THE  KING  OF  SWING 


BENNY 

GOODMAN 


IHAHtr  M*8     I      >* 
ClNtKHWA     '■!••  '■/ 
UONtl  HAWTOW 
TEOOf  VW1SON 


7-38  Jazz  Concert  No.  2 


12  inimitable  Elgart 
arrangements  —  ideal 
for  listening  or  dancing 


Eight  of  the  best-loved 
melodies  of  all  time  — 
magnificently  performed 


America's  favorite  quar- 
tet sings  Love  Walked 
In  and  11  others 


Benny  Goodman  and  his 
Original  Orchestra,  Trio 
and  Quartet.  11  numbers 


rMlk'ikE 


::    Symphony  No.  3 
Academic 
Festival 
Overture  . 

Jlfcr  7* 
WALTER 

NEW- YORK  PHILHARMONIC 


6  works:  Symphony  No.  3, 
Academic  Festival  Over- 
ture, 4  Hungarian  Dances 


The  complete  score  of 
Lehar's  operetta-Vilia, 
Maxim's,  Women,  etc. 


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CIRCLE  3  NUMBERS  BELOW: 

T.  Eddy  Duchin  Story 

2.  Beethoven:  3  piano  sonatas 

3.  Erroll  Garner  ("Caravan") 

4.  Gaite  Parisienne;  Les  Sylphides 

5.  Easy  To  Remember — Luboff  Choir 

6.  My  Fair  Lady— Orig.  Broadway  Cast 

7.  Brubeck  and  Jay  &  Kai 

8.  Gershwin  Hi's— Percy  Faith 

9.  Sinatra — Adventures  of  the  Heart 

10.  Ambassador  Satch 

11.  Firebird;  Romeo  and  Juliet 

12.  Day  By  Day— Doris  Day 

13.  Johann  Strauss— Waltzes 

14.  Lure  of  the  Tropics — Kostetanelz 

15.  Ports  Of  Call 

16.  Oklahoma! 

17.  levant  Plays  Gershwin 

18.  The  Elgart  Touch 

19.  The  Great  Melodies  of  Tchaikovsky 

20.  Suddenly  It's  the  Hi-Lo's 

21.  King  of  Swing— Benny  Goodman 

22.  Brahms:  Symphony  No.  3 

23.  The  Merry  Widow 

24.  Wonderful,  Wonderful— Mathis    PE-1 


10 


LETTERS 


sometimes';  and   then  with  an  archness 
peculiar    to    his   character,    putting    the 
glass   to   his   blind   eye,    he   exclaimed, 
I  really  d<>  not  sec  the  signal.'" 

Gordon  N.  Ray 
Urbana.    Illinois 

Baddest  Seal 

To  the  Editors: 

We  enjoyed  "The  Seal  That  Couldn't 
Swim"  [November]  and  think  that  the 
drawings  by  Roy  McKie  are  the  baddest. 

Die  k    1)  V\  is 

San  Fran*  is<  o,  Calif. 

The  Farm  Bloc 

To  the  Editors: 

I   have   just  read  Carroll    Kllpatrick's 

article  ["What  Happened  to  the  Farm 
Bloc?"  Nov.]  with  great  interest  be- 
cause it  gives  a  true  picture  of  that 
important  situation  just  as  I  touched 
on  the  problem  in  m\  speet  h  of  last 
August  to  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives: "There  was  a  day,  and  not  so 
long  ago,  when  the  Members  ol 
Congress  from  agricultural  states  held 
the  balance  of  power  in  Congress  when 
legislation  beneficial  to  all  our  farmers 
was  at  stake,  but  the  exit  from  the 
farms  to  the  cities  has  considerably 
weakened  that  power.  Then  too.  the 
Southern  farm  bloc,  who  are  in  con- 
trol of  farm  legislation  in  Congress,  are 
not  concerned  about  the  grain  and 
livestock  farmers  of  the  Middle  West. 
"Add  to  that  the  Members  of  Congress 
in  both  parties  from  the  large  consum- 
ing centers  who  want  cheap  food  and 
feed  for  the  people  they  represent. 
They  constantly  complain  about  farm 
subsidies,  and  say  their  people  just 
don't  like  to  pay  taxes  to  subsidize  our 
farmers  while  at  the  same  time  their 
cost  of  living  is  constantly  going  up. 
We  keep  explaining  to  them  that  the 
farmer  receives  only  about  forty  cents 
of  the  dollar  they  pay  for  food.  Yes, 
the  time  may  come  when  the  whole 
federal  farm  program  might  be  scuttled, 
and  that  time  may  come  sooner  than 
we  think.  .  .  ."  Ben  F.  Jensen 

I  louse   of  Representatives 
Washington,  D.  C. 

Kilpatrick  has  high  hopes  lor  a  con- 
sumer-written farm  program  now  that 
those  ignorant  members  of  the  "Faun 
Bloc"  are  at  odds.  He  notes  with  ap- 
proval a  Congressional  investigation  of 
margins  initiated  by  "an  all-city  repre- 
sentative." How  (an  Kilpatrick  fail  to 
know  that  margins  already  have  been 
a  favorite  whipping  boy  of  the  "Farm 
Bloc"  for  three  decades?  While  margins 
investigations    have    jolly    well    afflicted 


the  comfortable,   they   have  done   little 
to  comforl  tin-  afflicted. 

The  "Faun  Bloc"  is  roundly  con- 
demned lor  seeking  "price,  price,  price" 
and  ignoring  the  long-run  solution  of 
migration  to  the  cities.  Oddly  enough 
farmers  have  to  live  in  the  short-run, 
and  they  seek  price  with  the  same 
practical  logic  that  labor  seeks  wages, 
and   business  seeks  profits. 

V.    James    Rhodi  s 
Columbia,    Mo. 


Review  of  Miss  Rand 

1  o  mi    Editors: 

It  seems  clear  to  me  that  the  most 
essential  requisites  of  a  book  reviewer 
are  that  he  (a)  read  the  book  he  is 
reviewing,  and  (b)  be  able  to  sum- 
marize adequately  its  central  theme. 
Whatever  the  merits  of  bis  critical 
judgment,  surely  these  qualities  must 
Ik  upheld.  What  can  we  think  then  ol 
Mr.  Paul  Pickrel,  who  in  his  review  ol 
Ayn  Rand's  Atlas  Shrugged  in  your 
Novembe]  issue  (a)  openly  boasts  that 
Ik  has  read  only  one-fourth  of  the 
novel,  and  (b)  states  as  the  central 
theme  ol  the  book  what  is  almost  the 
diametric  opposite-  ol  the  actual  theme? 
.  .  .  [Contrary  to  Mr.  PickrcTs  account], 
there  is  no  murder  or  hint  ol  murder 
in  [the  300  pages  he  has  read]   .... 

Murray  N.   Rothbard 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

Mr.  Rothbard  has  misunderstood  my 
review  of  Miss  Rand's  book  in  one 
respect:  I  did  not  openly  boast  that  1 
had  read  only  a  fourth  of  the  novel: 
I  openly  confessed  it.  1  happen  to  like 
to  read  and  prefer  to  finish  the  books 
I  start.  I  am  not  intimidated  by  long 
books  and  have  read  several  in  my 
time.  I  had  to  stop  reading  Miss  Rand's 
book  before  I  had  finished  it  because 
I  couldn't  stand  it.  The  fact  that  Mr. 
Rothbard  could  entitles  him  to  dis- 
agree with  my  judgment;  it  does  not 
entitle  him  to  see  behind  my  judgment 
a   spirit   that  was  not  there. 

In  general  I  agree  with  Mr.  Roth- 
bard that  a  reviewer  should  read  every 
word  of  a  book  he  reviews,  and  I  have 
plowed  through  many  a  weary  page  out 
of  loyalty  to  that  fine  old  principle. 
But  occasionally,  and  in  special  circum- 
stances, I  think  a  reviewer  can  take 
refuge,  il  he  is  perfectly  honest  about 
what  he  is  doing,  in  another  fine  old 
principle— that  you  don't  have  to  eat 
the  whole  egg  to  know  it's  rotten.  I 
do  not  agree  with  Mr.  Rothbard's  ap- 
parent assumption  that  if  a  reviewer 
does  not  finish  a  book  it  is  better  for 
him  to  disguise  that  fact  from  his 
readers.     As    a    reader,    Mr.    Rothbard 


may  have  greatei  staying  powei  than  I 
have,  but  he  is  less  careful  than  I  am. 
If  be  will  reread  the  Inst  800  pages 
carefully,  he  will  find  that  a  murder 
is  referred  to  with  approval  more  than 
once— the  murder  ol  ,i  state  legislator 
l-\  the-  grandfathej  ol  the  present  gen- 
eration   ol    the    railroad    Eamily. 

I'm  i     PlCKREL 
New    Haven,    Conn. 


Proof  of  the  Pudding 

To  mi    Editors: 

I  agree  with  Mr.  Con's  thesis  that 
there  are  still  regional  and  local  differ- 
ences in  eating  habits,  and  a  wide  range 
of  prices  as  well.  But  he  got  there  in 
spite  of  his  data  which  are  often  most 
fallacious.  I  think  I  am  qualified  to 
comment;  I've  kept  house  in  eleven  very 
different  cities  in  the  last.  South.  South- 
west, and  on   the  West  Coast. 

Mr.  Con's  selection  of  elates  is  unfor- 
tunate. In  December,  large  sections  of 
the  country  will  have  no  local  pro- 
duce. ...  In  any  place  with  a  large 
proportion  ol  Catholics,  the  Thursday 
ads  naturally  feature  Friday's  fish.  Ibis 
places  undue  emphasis  on  an  item  that 
is  often  eaten  only  once  a  week.  The 
availability,  importance,  and  variety  of 
fish  in  New  Orleans  diets  is  not  sug- 
gested by  Mi.  Con.  ...  Or  that  South- 
erners consume  immense  quantities  of 
collards  and  mustard  greens,  hardly  fa-. 
vorite  edibles  elsewhere.  Or  that  in  New 
York  veal  is  a  delicate,  rather  costly 
meat  from  milk-fed  calves;  in  the  South 
it  is  a  scraggy  "poor  lolks"  viand.  .  .  . 

Let's  look  at  the  table  of  selected 
items.  Cooking  oil  and  detergent,  stan- 
dard staples  ol  fixed  quality,  are  com- 
parable, but  weekend  special  prices 
prove  little  as  to  their  year-round  cost. 
Canned  peas  and  corn  vary  greatly  in 
quality;  did  Mr.  Cort  compare  grade  as 
well  as  can  size?  When  we  come  to  meat, 
how  does  he  know  it  was  the  "best  sieak 
in  town"?  In  many  cities,  independent 
luxury  markets  are  the  source  ol  the 
best  steak;  they  don't  advertise  like  the 
chains,  however,  and  seldom  publicly 
proclaim  the  astronomical  price  of  the 
best  steak.  But  as  to  the  chains:  in  many 
pi. ices  they  don't  carry  "prime"  beef, 
only  the  next  two  grades,  "choice"  and 
"good."  Was  Mr.  Cort  careful  to  com- 
pare only   "choice"  with   "choice"? 

Reading  the  food  ads  in  a  strange 
city,  my  practiced  and  cynical  eye  notes 
data  from  which  I  can  make  certain  ten- 
tative deductions,  but  none  so  sweeping 
as  Mr.  Cort's  extrapolations.  Really  to 
understand  the  popular  food  picture  in 
any  city  takes  the  experience  acquired  in 
the  market  place,  pushing  a  wire  cart. 
Mrs.  William  Von  Puhl 
San    Antonio,     Texas 


fl* 


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THE  COMPLETE  WORKS  OF 


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Shakespeare  w  Bacon 


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All  37  Plays    •    Comedies,  Tragedies, 
Histories  and  Poems 

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Why  The  Classics  Club  Offers  You  These  2  Books  Free 

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On  love,  Truth,  Friendship,  Riches 
and  54  Other  Fascinating  Subjects 

ERE  is  another  Titan  of  the  Elizabethan  era — Sir  Francis  Bacon, 
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JOHN  FISCHER 


EASY  CHAIR 


Conversation  at  Midnight 


SCHLOSS     LEOPOLDSKRON 
SALZBURG, AUSTRIA 

THIS  castle  is  supposed  to  be  haunted.  A 
Nazi  gauleiter  shot  Ids  wile,  his  three 
children,  and  himself  in  the  little  lookout  room 
on  the  top  floor  that  morning  when  he  saw  the 
American  tanks  break  into  the  valley;  and  other 
troubled  spirits  (I  am  told)  have  been  mewling 
and  clanking  around  the  staircases  lor  a  good 
two  hundred  years.  So  it  was  only  sensible  to 
take  precautions. 

The  best  protection  against  ghosts,  Father 
Florian  said,  was  a  bottle  of  the  red  wine  put 
up  by  his  fellow  monks  at  the  Peterskeller.  It 
is  not  very  good  wine,  but  it  is  strong,  and  after 
a  few  glasses  any  apparition  wotdd  hardly  be 
noticeable.  As  my  spiritual  adviser  (self- 
appointed)  he  had  taken  the  liberty  of  bringing 
a  liter  with  him. 

"I  detest  being  interrupted  by  spooks,"  he  said 
as  he  pulled  the  cork.  "Or,  for  that  matter,  by 
anyone  else.  Close  the  door.  I  have  to  reprove 
you,  and  I  don't  want  those  people  wandering 
in  with  their  silly  questions." 

This  was  unfair.  "Those  people"  are  fifty- 
eight  young  men  and  women  who  are,  for  the 
moment,  living  here;  Father  Florian  is  merely  an 
occasional  visitor,  usually  uninvited.  They  have 
come  from  sixteen  European  countries,  because 
each  of  them  has  a  professional  interest  in  the 
United  States,  and  because  the  Schloss  is  now 
occupied  by  a  curious  kind  of  school,  known  as 
The  Seminar  in  American  Studies.  It  is  true  that 
they  often  cross-examine  the  five  Americans  who 
serve  as  faculty  until  all  hours  of  the  night,  but 
their  questions  are  seldom  silly.  They  are  people 
of  trained  intelligence— diplomats,  newspaper- 
men, teachers,  sociologists,  civil  servants— and 
their    inquiries    sometimes    are    uncomfortably 


sharp.  Father  Florian  never  asks  questions;  he 
gives  answers,  whether  you  want  them  or  not.  He 
is  dogmatic,  fat,  and  impertinent;  and  I  am  fond 
of  him. 

He  filled  two  glasses  and  settled  himself  in  the 
only  comfortable  chair  in  my  study. 

"The  trouble  with  you  Americans  .  .  ."  he  said. 

"Look,"  I  interrupted,  "let's  get  back  to  the 
ghosts.  For  the  last  month  these  people  have 
been  telling  me  what  is  wrong  with  Americans, 
and  I  am  beginning  to  get  the  idea.  We  are  a 
bunch  of  crude  materialists.  We've  got  no  cul- 
ture, no  respect  for  tradition,  no  sense  of  history, 
no  ideals,  no  palate.  .  .  ." 

"Nonsense,"  Father  Florian  said.  "It  is  true 
that  most  Furopeans  believe  those  legends,  but 
I  am  going  to  tell  you  what  is  really  wrong  with 
America.  I  traveled  back  and  forth  across  your 
country  for  seven  years,  making  a  serious  study 
of  the  American  soul.  And  I  don't  think  you 
understand  yourselves  any  better  than  these 
youngsters  who  have  been  talking  at  you." 

He  loosened  the  rope  he  wore  around  the 
middle  of  his  cassock  and  eased  his  throat  with 
a  little  wine. 

"The  real  trouble,"  he  said,  "is  that  you  are  a 
bunch  of  dreamy  poets.  You  are  besotted  with 
culture.  You  spend  more  time  and  money  on  it 
than  you  can  afford.  Idealism  is  a  fine  thing,  but 
you  Americans  have  carried  it  too  far— to  the 
point  where  you  can  no  longer  bear  to  lace  a 
hard,  materia]  fact  when  you  meet  one.  This  is 
dangerous.  You  will  have  to  learn  to  be  prac- 
tical, or  you  will  perish. 

"Now  don't  misunderstand  me.  We  are  grate- 
ful for  your  cultural  leadership,  though  natu- 
rally we  can't  admit  it.  We  have  to  snarl  a  little, 
to  save  our  self-respect— but  we  are  soaking  up 
your  culture  like  a  parched  field  soaks  up  rain. 
We  play  your  music,  read  your  novels,  and  wear 
your  clothes  all  over  Europe.    Look  at  all  our 


cJc  tofied/cevm  A  Me  oecudfa/  tm/med  o/  me 

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Name    .  . 
Address 
City   .  .  . 


14 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


girls  in  blue  jeans  and  pony  tails,  and  all  our 
little  hoys  in  cowboj  champs.  Chaps?  Ah.  yes, 
Thank  von. 

I  \(.n  alcoholic  Paris,  thank  Heaven,  is  being 
infiltrated  with  milk  bars,  and  half  the  boys  in 
m\  parish  are  trying  to  play  the  trumpet  like 
Satchmo.  My  city  of  Vienna  invented  musical 
comedy,  but  "Kiss  Me,  Kate"  is  the  biggest  hit 
there  since  the  war.  This  is  embarrassing,  be- 
cause we  haven't  produced  a  good  musical  of 
our  own  lor  thirty  years.  And 
Germany,  which  is  tempo- 
rarily out  of  playwrights,  is 
making  a  national  hero  out  of 
Thornton  Wilder. 

"At  this  very  minute  there 
isn't  a  housewife  east  ol  the 
Danube  who  isn't  scheming  to 
gel  a  vacuum  cleaner,  a  wash- 
ing machine,  and  an  ice  box. 
Wonderful  aids  to  the  spirit- 
ual life.  When  a  woman 
doesn't  have  to  spend  all  her 
waking  hours  in  drudgery,  she 
can  find  time  for  literature 
and  art  and  even,  sometimes, 
for  the  Church.  If  we  Euro- 
peans have  a  religious  revival 
we  should  give  part  of  the 
thanks  to  the  United  States. 
We  won't  do  it,  of  course." 

A  STRANGULATED  moan  began  to 
reverberate  through  the  west  wall.  Father 
Florian  cocked  an  ear  and  suggested  that  per- 
haps we  should  send  for  another  bottle.  No  need, 
I  explained.  That  was  the  normal  voice  of  the 
neo-baroque  plumbing  in  the  bathroom— the  one 
with  the  three  crystal  chandeliers— which  Max 
Reinhardt  had  installed  when  he  lived  here. 

"Nevertheless  I  shall  take  another  glass,"  the 
friar  said,  "for  this  castle  and  all  its  ghosts  can 
bear  testimony  to  the  warning  I  am  about  to 
deliver.  Schloss  Leopoldskron  is,  in  fact,  a  relic 
of  a  cultural  spree,  much  like  the  one  on  which 
America  is  now  embarking.  And  I  must  warn 
you  that  a  nation  can  pay  too  high  for  such  a 
flowering  of  the  spirit. 

"That  is  precisely  the  mistake  we  Austrians 
made  a  couple  of  centuries  ago.  Our  Empire 
was  then  the  first  power  on  the  Continent.  We 
had  recently  won  a  terrible  war.  Our  armies 
were  invincible;  our  economy  was  thriving;  our 
political  system  obviously  was  the  soundest  ever 
ordained  by  God.  So  we  took  all  that  for  granted 
—indeed  we  affected  a  contempt  for  the  material 
side  of  life— and  for  three  generations  wc  de- 
voted our  considerable  energies  to  developing  an 
extravagant  and  delightful  civilization. 

"Like  yourselves,  we  were  a  religious  people. 
We  worshiped  the  Holy  Trinity,  instead  of  the 
automobile,  but  we  lavished  on  it  fully  as  much 


~Tcry\, 


money,  artistry,  and  sacrificial  effort  as  you  now 
devote  to  the  products  of  Detroit's  Big  Three. 
"Don't  interrupt.  I  am  not,  at  the  moment, 
criticizing  your  faith.  Othei  pagan  countries 
have  done  worse.  Your  wheeled  idol  combines 
all  the  best  features  ol  Moloch,  the  Juggernaut, 
iiul  the  Golden  Call— and  as  a  student  ol  com- 
parative religions  I  must  admit  that  your  con- 
set  ration  to  it  is  impressive. 

"How  many  lives  do  you  offer  up  a  year?  Forty 
thousand?  The  Toltecs  did 
no  better  for  Quetzalcoatl, 
although  their  method  of  exe- 
cution was  less  messy.  How 
many  priests  in  gray  flannel 
habits  sing  its  praises?  How 
many  farms  and  homes  do  you 
destroy  to  clear  its  path? 
What  will  you  not  sacrifice  in 
toil,  cash,  and  inconvenience 
in  its  service?  I  myself  have 
watched  your  people  at  their 
Sunday  afternoon  devotions, 
standing  bumper  to  bumper 
on  the  highway,  their  lips 
moving  in  silent  prayer.  And 
I  have  seen  how  your  male 
children— acolytes,  I  presume 
—anoint  their  heads  with  oil 
and  prostrate  themselves  for 
hours  at  a  time  beneath  the 
sacred  object.  In  its  heathen  way,  such  piety  is 
admirable. 

"But  can  you  afford  it?  Austria  couldn't— and 
I  beg  you  to  profit  from  our  example  while  there 
is  yet  time. 

"We,  too,  had  no  patience  with  anything  old- 
fashioned.  We  tore  down  perfectly  good  Gothic 
churches  and  replaced  them  with  bigger  and 
fancier  models.  For  our  archbishops  and  their 
mistresses  we  built  palaces  by  the  do/en— like  tins 
one  and  Mirabell  and  Hellbrunn.  Every  inch  we 
decorated  with  plaster  curlicues  and  gold  leaf, 
at  immense  expense,  just  as  you  encrust  your 
tolling  temples  with  chrome  and  fins  and  colored 
lights.  Both  you  and  we,  it  seems,  have  an  in- 
satiable taste  for  the  rococo. 

"Nor  did  we  see  anything  wrong  with  combin- 
ing our  religious  life  with  sensuality.  Music  and 
love  and  laughter  were  the  leitmotifs  of  our 
eighteenth  century.  Our  entertainment  industry 
—like  yours— grew  enormous;  our  theaters  and 
ok  hestras  were  the  envy  of  the  world.  Mozart  got 
as  much  homage  as  Dave  Brubeck,  and  almost  as 
much  money.  (Their  work,  as  I  am  sure  you 
have  noticed,  sounds  oddly  similar— two  varieties, 
so   to   speak,   of  baroque   chamber   music.) 

"And  while  we  frivoled  away  our  substance  and 
brain-power  in  this  joyous  outburst  of  creativity, 
a  glum  little  band  of  Frenchmen  were  incubat- 
ing the  revolution  which— a  few  years  later— was 
to  destroy  us.  Nobody  warned  us,  and  perhaps 


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16 


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THE     EASY     CHAIR 

we  wouldn't  have  listened  it  ihc\ 
had.  Who  could  believe  that  ;i 
ridiculous  fat  man  named  Bonaparte 

might  one  day  stable  his  cavalry  in 
our  clniH  Iks? 

"He  was  .1  crude  type,  interested 
in  cannon,  not  culture.  Almost  as 
crude  as  the  Russians  who  made  the 
•sputnik  while  \ou  were  making  the 
Edsel.  Now  I  don't  doubt  that  the 
F.ilsel  is  an  icon  ol  surpassing  loveli- 
ness. Hut  is  it  practical?  At  this 
moment  in  history  can  you  really 
afford  to  go  on  spending  a  billion 
dollars  every  year  to  make  purely 
cosmetic  changes  in  your  automo- 
biles? A  less  poetic  nation,  I  should 
think,  might  use  its  money  and  its 
talent  in  less  romantic  ways. 

"No,  no,  I  am  not  talking  about 
lockets.  You  will  get  those,  all  right, 
because  your  pride  has  been 
wounded.  But  the  contest  between 
you  and  the  Russians  will  not  be 
decided  with  rockets.  You  will  have 
to  keep  them  in  reserve,  ol  course, 
bul  neither  side  will  dare  to  use 
them;  you  may  be  dreamy,  but  1 
don't  think  you  are  suicidal. 

"Meanwhile  the  contest  will  be 
fought  with  Ear  subtler  weapons- 
weapons  which  you  apparently  can't 
build,  and  haven.'t  the  faintest  idea 
how  to  use.  Know-how— isn't  that; 
the  phrase?  Well,  you  Americans 
just  haven't  got  it. 

"Take  diplomacy,  for  example. 
Since  war  is  no  longer  feasible, 
diplomacy  obviously  has  become  a 
decisive  instrument.  The  Com- 
munists have  known  this  for  a  long 
time,  and  they  have  built  a  formi- 
dable diplomatic  machine.  All  of  its 
parts  are  tooled  and  polished  to 
mesh  together— a  corps  of  highly 
trained  diplomats,  a  superb  intel- 
ligence apparatus,  an  even  better 
propaganda  set-up,  military  pressure 
where  needed,  and  all  the  economic 
levers  from  trade  pacts  to  bribery. 
They  have  been  using  it  to  win  one 
thumping  victory  after  another. 

"You  Americans,  on  the  other 
hand,  apparently  don't  even  know 
what  diplomacy  is.  You  still  think  of 
it  in  terms  of  striped  pants  and  tea- 
si  ppers,  and  you  treat  its  practi- 
tioners with  contempt,  as  if  they 
were  male  ballet  dancers. 

"Your  policies— if  I  may  use  the 
word  loosely— never  seem  to  mesh. 
Your  President,  Vice  President,  and 
Secretary    of   State    sometimes    issue 


Traveler's 
Guide 


to 


good  food 


in  Britain 


THE  BRITISH  BREAKFAST.  Gargantuan  is  the 
word.  Where  else  can  you  order  mixed 
grill,  smoked  kipper  and  finnan  haddie? 
Tea  is  the  national  eye-opener.  But  most 
hotels  offer  coffee  as  a  choice. 


the  British  tea  CEREMONY.  Victorian  wits 
called  it  a  "bun-worry."  Tea  includes 
buns,  cakes,  tarts,  crumpets,  muffins,  and 
exquisite  little  sandwiches.  Go  North  for 
scones.  Go  West  for  Devonshire  Cream. 


ROAST  BEEF.  The  roast  beef  of  Old  Eng- 
land is  here  in  all  its  glory.  The  British 
do  not  smother  meat  with  rich  sauces. 
Steaks  come  thick  and  rare.  Southdown 
lamb  gets  a  touch  of  red  currant  jelly. 


HEAVENLY  FISH.  No  place  in  Britain  is 
more  than  75  miles  from  the  sea.  The 
fish  almost  jump  into  the  pot.  Above  is 
a  Scotch  salmon.  Gourmets  leave  home 
for  it.  Likewise,  for  English  oysters. 


unbeatable  GAME.  British  cooks  really 
understand  game.  Grouse  from  Scotland. 
Partridge  and  pheasant  from  the  great 
estates.  Order  a  bottle  of  claret.  British 
cellars  are  the  envy  of  the  world. 


POETIC  cheeses.  Is  there  a  finer  cheese 
than  Stilton?  It  takes  six  months  to  reach 
perfection.  Honest  British  bread  and 
beer  go  down  well  with  all  the  local 
cheeses.  Try  the  supreme   Wensleydale. 


fabulous  fruit.  Britain's  fruit  ripens 
slowly.  Taste  Royal  Sovereign  strawber- 
ries. They  have  more  flavor  than  the 
American  strawberry.  Same  is  true  of 
English  peaches,  apples  — and  jams. 


REGIONAL  dishes.  Feeling  adventurous? 
Try  Cumberland  rum  butter  and  the 
mysterious  Scotch  haggis.  Taste  the  pies 
—  Melton  Mowbray,  Kentish  Chicken. 
Lunch  in  most  places  costs  under  $1.50! 


FREE !  Gourmet  Magazine's  72-page  Guide  to  Britain,  listing  over  250  famous  restaurants.  Write  Box  17  5,  British  Travel  A 


ssoctation. 


¥ 


'BOM   THE  JOHNNIE   WALK  El!  COLLECTION 


End  of  the  Hunt 


5J 


by  JOHN  CARROLT 


The  Artist  at  U  orh 


Sensitivity  strokes  every  Carroll  canvas,  capturing  spirit 
as  clearly  as  substance. 

In  1820,  sensil  ivity  to  quality  stirred  John  Walker  to 
produce  another  kind  of  masterpiece  —  Johnnie  Walker 
Black  Label  Scotch  whisky.  It  took  time.  It  took  a  tech- 
nique of  whisky-making  which  no  one  else  possessed.  But 
what  rich  rewards!  To  collectors  of  the  world's  linest  offer- 
ings, Black  Label  fills  the  niche  reserved  for  "product  of 
genius." 


Johnnie  Wai 

Bom  182C 

still  going  stt 


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His  own  story,  in  his  own  words, 
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I — |     MERCHANT    OF    PRAT0    by   Iris 

I I     Origo.  Extraordinary  biography 

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t — I     HISTORY  OF  THE  GERMAN  GENERAL 

I I     STAFF   by  Walter  Goerlitz.  The 

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THE  TREE  OF  CULTURE  fey  Ralph 

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I — |     A    WORLD    RESTORED    by    Henry 

I I     Kissinger.  A  new  look  at  one  of 

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Metternich's  genius  resolved  the  chaos 
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Vandiver.    What    kind    of    man 

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Address n°t  fight  on  Sunday?  List  price  $6.50. 

KINGDOM  OF  THE  SAINTS  fey  Ray 


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BYZANTIUM:  Greatness  and  Decline 
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A  HISTORY  OF  FRANCE  by  Andre 
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TESTIMONY  OF  THE  SPADE  by 
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ARMS  AND  MEN  by  Walter  Millis. 
This  remarkable  study- in-depth 
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today.  List  price  $5.75. 

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18 


COMING   IN 


Harpers 

-■-  m  n  an  -in 


HOW  TO  CHOOSE 
A  COLLEGE 

Millions  of  families  are  arguing 
the  same  vexing  questions:  Should 
they  send  their  children  to  college? 
And  if  so.  to  which?  The  head  of 
the  Carnegie  Corporation — who  is 
intimately  familiar  with  the  great 
variety  of  American  universities — 
offers  some  helpful  guideposts  for 
both  parents  and  students. 

By  John  W.  Gardner 


WHAT    TWO    LAWYERS 
ARE  DOING  TO  HOLLYWOOD 

By  flying  in  the  face  of  the  most 
entrenched  traditions  of  the  film 
business.  Robert  S.  Benjamin  and 
Arthur  B.  Krim  saved  United 
Artists  from  extinction  —  and 
changed  the  social  structure  of  the 
movie  world,  while  they  both  grew 
rich. 

By  Murray  Teigh  Bloom 


THE     EDITOR* S     EASY     CHAIR 


NEXT   MONTH 


George  F.  Ken  nan  .  .  . 

attracted  world-wide  attention 
with  his  recent  proposals,  broad- 
cast over  BBC,  for  a  drastic  shift 
in  American  policy  in  dealing 
with  Russia.  Germany,  the  I  nited 
Nations,  and  the  NATO  alliance. 

Their  exclusive  publication  in 
the  United  States  will  begin  in 
Februarv. 


three  contradictory  statements  on 
three  successive  days.  Any  blabber- 
mouthed  Congressman,  general,  or 
Faubus  can  destroy  months  of  pa- 
tient diplomatic  effort  in  a  single 
hour,  and  often  does. 

You  do  have  a  few  competent 
diplomats  —  Charles  Bohlen  and 
George  Kennan  probably  know  as 
much  about  Russia  as  an)  men  in 
the  West— but  for  some  reason 
(which  no  foreigner  can  possibly  un- 
derstand) you  refuse  to  use  them. 
One  of  them  is  rusting  in  Manila, 
the  other  is  lecturing  at  Oxford. 

"What  you  do  use  is  a  herd  of 
amateurs.  Your  Whitney  s  and  your 
Glucks  are  estimable  gentlemen,  no 
doubt,  with  a  cultivated  taste  for 
race  horses  and  convertible  deben- 
tures—but in  an  Embassy  they  are 
strictly  greenhorns.  You  wouldn't 
dream  of  asking  them  to  play  first 
bas<  tor  the  Yankees,  or  to  fix  your 
carburetor,  or  to  fill  your  teeth.  For 
these  jobs  you  insist  on  professionals. 
Yet  when  your  survival  as  a  nation 
is  at  issue,  you  call  in  any  stray 
millionaire  who  happened  to  contri- 
bute   to    the   right   campaign    fund. 

"You  see  why  we  foreigners  can- 
not believe  that  you  are  a  serious 
people?'' 

\\  /    1TH      considerable      cliffi- 

\  v  culty,  I  managed  to  inter- 
rupt. Only  millionaires,  I  pointed 
out,  could  afford  to  accept  appoint- 
ment to  a  major  Embassy.  By  ancient 
tradition  the  United  States  does  not 
pay  its  Foreign  Service  professionals 
enough  to  cover  the  running  costs 
of  such  a  post. 

"Thank  you,"  he  said,  "for  re- 
minding me  of  another  American 
habit  which  lias  always  baffled  me. 
Why  are  you  always  unwilling  to 
pay  for  what  you   need  most? 

"In  helping  others  you  are  incred- 
ibl)  generous.  For  luxuries— from 
deodorants  to  mink  stoles— you 
spend  your  money  with  childlike 
abandon.  But  when  it  comes  to  the 
real  necessities,  you  are  stingier  than 
a  Styrian  peasant. 

"For  the  price  of  one  ballistic 
missile,  for  one-tenth  of  what  your 
women  spend  on  lipstick,  you  could 
staff  all  your  Embassies  with  well- 
trained  professionals.  And  that  is 
a  comparatively  petty  example. 
Take  a  big  one. 

"All    of    you    seem    to    be    pretty 


well  in  agreement  that  you  need 
schoolteachers.  You  have  discov- 
ered, with  alarm,  that  the  Rus- 
sians arc  wa)  ahead  of  you  in  the 
kind  of  education  that  pays  oft 
Their  children  get  more  hours  of 
instruction  in  ten  years  than  yours 
get  in  twelve— and  better  instruction, 
too,  because  they  average  seventeen 
pupils  to  a  class,  while  you  average 
twenty-seven.  They  turn  out  eighty 
thousand  engineers  a  year;  you  turn 
out  thirty  thousand.  All  their  high- 
school  graduates  have  a  good,  stiff 
training  in  mathematics,  physics,  and 
chemistry:  less  than  a  third  of  yours 
can  match  them  in  any  one  of  these 
fields. 

"What  is  more  important  still, 
Russian  students  learn  foreign  lan- 
guages. In  their  higher  institutions, 
65  per  cent  of  them  study  English 
alone.  How  many  Americans  learn 
Russian?    One  per  cent? 

"This  fact  ought  to  scare  you  more 
than  the  sputnik.  Because  skill  in 
languages— not  just  tor  a  few  people, 
but  for  millions— is  the  place  where 
a  successful  foreign  policy  begins. 
When  a  Russian  goes  abroad  for  any 
purpose,  he  can  talk  to  the  local 
people  in  their  own  tongue— whether 
they  are  Arab  villagers  or  Burmese 
guerrillas  or  French  scientists.  When 
Colonel  Rudolph  Abel  set  up  his  spy 
center  in  Brooklyn  he  spoke  Brook- 
Iynese  like  a  Flatbush  bartender. 
When  Soviet  technicians  build  a 
steel  mill  in  India,  their  plans  are 
(halted  in  Hindi. 

"Yet  of  the  half-million  Americans 
who  travel  overseas  ever)  year,  I 
don't  think  I  have  met  a  dozen  who 
could  manage  even  the  simpler 
European  languages  with  fluency. 
By  the  way,  how  well  do  you  speak 
German?" 


FATHER  Florian  had  the  tact 
not  to  wait  for  an  answer,  (f 
would  have  had  to  tell  him  that  I 
can  order  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  that 
—in  a  pinch— I  can  ask  whether  the 
train  is  on  time.  If  the  stationmaster 
speaks  slowly  enough,  I  can  often 
understand  his  reply.) 

"The  Russians  got  ahead  of  you," 
he  said,  "because  they  are  hard- 
headed  businessmen  who  understand  i 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand. 
When  they  wanted  teachers  they 
paid   for   them.    Not   just   in   cash— 

""" -"" ii 


lf% 


FROM 


jheJHetropolitanMuseum  of  Art 


2,4  FULL-COLOR  MINIATURES 


OF  FAMOUS 
PAINTINGS  BY 


^Vincent  van  £jogl 


A  DEMONSTRATION 

WITHOUT  CHARGE 

of  a  simple  and  sensible  way — particularly 

for  families  with  children — to  obtain 

a  well-rounded  education  in  the  history  and 

appreciation  of  art 

THE  METROPOLITAN  MINIATURES  PLAN  .  Otice  a 
~en:h  :he  Museun  -e?::.:_;e>  2.  ?e lee:  ?r  :""r....r.:- 
ings  infun color.  Each  >e:  deals  witii  a  different  artist 
or  school  and  contains  24  fine  color  prints  (^slightly 
larger  than  shown  at  right)  ani  ;  JZ-nje  album, 
in  which  the  artist  and  his  work  are  discussed,  and 
in  which  the  prints  can  be  affixed  in  giver  57i;es. 
In  effect  the  project  is  an  informal  but  compre- 
hensf  re  coarse,  in  both  the  hist  c--  and  irrreciadon 
of  art,  for  rer>.::ii  of  all  ages. 

ONE-MONTH  FREE  TRIAL  SUBSCRIPTION.  WITH  NO 
OBLIGATION — to  acquaint  you  with  the  pro  set  A: 
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read  the  album— then  cej  fe,       .hin  the  month. 

tether  or  1  •        continue.  If  not,  s  ny. 

let  us  know  and  we  shall  immedia.e     cancel  this 
provisional  subscription.  No  matter 
incision,  the  introducer.  Vincent  van  Gogh  ?e: 
5  free  The  price  For  each  set    if    do  continue    is 
SI. 25,    ochid  Dg  the  album.  With  the  first  >e:  pur- 

.   srv  sixth  set  thereafter 
. . :  ve  free  a  handsome  portfolio  which  holds  six 
albums. 

PLEASE  NOTE:  Since  the  Metre 

une^  handle  the  details  hi 

project,  i:  das  arranged  to  ha'  e  the  Boofc-of-the- 

Month  (    ib  at    as        al  distributor    T  k 

selection  of  suh:ec:< 

n  or  prints  remain  whollv  under  the  supervision 
.  M  .>eum. 


SLIGHTLY  LARGER 
THAN  THIS 


sCC<-CI-"-:-WCS""-     ;.-:-:  ::-' 

345  Hudson  Street,  Ne  -      :-<     -    S.  Y. 

ase  send  —=  1:   race   I-  :'_.    :  aes    _-; 

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-.  .    ■    iered  2  oriel  sobscripQCQ.  lies 
::  rsmevt    aoconimg  --Z  ;:_"  aTxer.  wirizirj  :re   ~ 

;  thereafter    Ifl  Eontnme   u':=-  :-.i  free  set 
:i  S  -  23    "or  aacti  set  of  Mmssttses  iftmra 

besenre  er   5ecorai  metntb 

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«••-: 


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PROVINCE  DE 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


professors  do  get  the  equivalent  of 
about  $50,000  a  year.  They  also 
offered  something  more  important: 
prestige.  In  any  Soviet  town  a 
teacher  is  a  Big  Man.  He  enjoys  as 
much  standing  in  the  community  as 
a  real  estate  speculator  in  New  York 
or  an  oil-lease  broker  in  Dallas.  He 
lives  in  the  best  suburb,  gets  the  best 
table  in  restaurants,  and  is  invited  to 
the  best  parties.  So  their  bright 
youngsters  head  for  the  teaching 
profession  just  as  naturally  as  yours 
head  for  Wall  Street  or  Madison 
Avenue. 

"But  you  Americans  have  never 
learned  to  meet  a  payroll— not  in 
your  schools,  anyhow.  You  offer 
teachers  less  than  truck  drivers,  and 
then  you  wonder  why  you  have  135,- 
000  classroom  jobs  unfilled.  I  have 
even  heard— but  this  I  can't  believe, 
it  must  be  Communist  propaganda— 
that  some  of  your  universities  will 
pay  more  for  a  football  coach  than 
for  a  physics  professor. 

"With  my  own  eyes,  however,  I 
have  seen  how  you  go  out  of  your 
way  to  make  your  scholars  feel  dis- 
reputable. You  ridicule  them  in  TV 
shows  and  comic  strips.  Your  poli- 
ticians harass  them.  Their  own 
pupils  treat  them  with  disrespect. 
You  call  them  names.  Incidentally, 
would  you  be  good  enough  to  ex- 
plain precisely  what  you  mean  by 
the  term  'egghead?'  ...  I  see . . .  Then 
tell  me  this:  who  but  an  egghead  can 
make  an  intercontinental  missile? 

"Or,  for  that  matter,  a  workable 
foreign  policy.  As  I  was  saying  a 
moment  ago,  this  is  where  your  im- 
practicality  shows  up  in  its  most  em- 
barrassing form.  In  other  aspects  of 
life  you  often  behave  with  good 
sense;  if  a  carpet  sweeper  or  an  add- 
ing machine  breaks  down,  you  get 
a  new  one.  But  when  a  foreign 
policy  doesn't  work,  you  cling  to  it 
all  the  tighter— out  of  sheer  senti- 
mentality, I  suppose.  Your  China 
policy  has  been  a  farce  for  the  last 
five  years;  your  German  rx>licy  is 
stalled  on  dead  center;  your  Middle 
East  policy  has  failed  beyond  the 
Kremlin's  wildest  hopes.  Yet  you 
cherish  them  like  heirlooms. 

"Much  as  our  beloved  Emperor 
Franz  Josef  did.  He  was  a  well-mean- 
ing old  gentleman  who  devoted  most 
of  his  time  to  shooting  rabbits— golf 
had  not  reached  Austria  in  his  day. 
He  was  not  an  intellectual  and  he 


suffered  from  a  sentimental  attach- 
ment to  old  mistresses  and  old  doc- 
trines. He  never  would  let  go  til  his 
Balkan  policy,  for  example,  even 
when  it  plainly  was  dragging  him  to 
disaster.  He  was,  you  may  remem- 
ber, the  last  of  our  emperors.  .  .  . 

"It  is  this  same  soft-hearted  streak, 
apparently,  which  keeps  you  from 
using  what  strength  you  have.  You 
may  be  slipping  militarily,  but  your 
economic  strength  is  still  unmatched. 
Here  is  your  obvious  instrument  for 
a  diplomatic  offensive  which  might 
still  save  the  western  world. 

"The  Russians  already  have 
showed  you  how,  and  with  a  fraction 
of  your  resources.  They  have  used  a 
few  million  rubles  worth  of  trade 
agreements— deployed  along  with 
their  other  diplomatic  weapons— to 
rope  in  Egypt  and  Syria,  and  they 
are  moving  fast  in  India,  Burma, 
and  Ceylon. 

"Why  do  you  let  them  get  away 
with  it?  Because— correct  me  if  I  am 
wrong— you  insist  on  tying  your 
hands  with  a  protective  tariff.  To 
protect  what?  A  couple  of  watch- 
makers, a  bicycle  manufacturer,  and 
a  few  clothespin  factories  in  Ver- 
mont. Because  these  gentlemen  do 
not  believe  in  the  competitive  free 
enterprise  system,  they  have  been 
weeping  on  the  shoulders  of  Con- 
gress—to such  good  effect  that  your 
present  Trade  Agreements  Act 
(modest  as  it  is)  may  be  gutted  when 
it  comes  up  for  renewal  in  June. 

"Only  a  nation  of  bleeding  hearts 
would  throw  away  its  sharpest 
weapon,  in  the  midst  of  dubious 
battle,  for  the  sake  of  such  a  hard- 
luck  story.  Can  a  country  so  im- 
practical, so  muddle-headed,  be 
trusted  in  a  harsh  material  world? 
Do  you  understand  why  we  Euro- 
peans hesitate  to  tie  our  fate  to  yours 
—however  charming  your  culture 
may  be?" 

TH  E  bottle  was  empty.  The 
clock  was  striking  two,  and 
even  the  bathroom  ghost  had  given 
up  for  the  night.  I  was  relieved 
when  Father  Florian  at  last  heaved 
himself  out  of  the  chair  and  wad- 
dled to  the  door.  He  had  not,  I  felt, 
been  altogether  considerate.  He  had 
known  that  I  still  had  to  prepare 
my  notes  for  tomorrow  morning's 
reassuring  lecture  about  the  United 
States. 


PrLrtSOINAJL  and  otherwise 


Among  Our  Contributors 


THE    NEW 

SAN     FRANCISCANS 

TH  E  loudest  recent  challenge 
to  New  York  as  the  nation's 
literary  capital  has  come  from  the 
writers  of  the  "San  Francisco  Renais- 
sance." These  are  a  branch  of  the 
Beat  Generation  and  are  few  in 
number— the  entire  generation  may 
include  only  some  twenty  members, 
according  to  Bruce  Bliven  in  his 
article  on  San  Francisco  in  this  issue 
of  Harper's.  On  purely  literary  evi- 
dence as  read  in  the  East,  the  San 
Franciscans  turn  out  to  be  not  only 
a  scanty  band  but  a  slippery  one. 
For  most  of  them,  San  Francisco  may 
be  a  spiritual  home,  but  it  is  not  the 
place  where  they  have  roots. 

At  present  Jack  Kerouac,  whose 
novel,  On  the  Road,  hit  the  best- 
seller lists  not  long  after  its  publica- 
tion by  the  Viking  Press  last  fall,  is 
the  only  popularly  known  writer  in 
the  group.  His  book  was  called  a 
major  work  by  Gilbert  Millstein  in 
the  New  York  Times,  compared  with 
The  Sun  Also  Rises  and  Of  Time 
and  the  River;  and  in  Harper's  Paul 
Pickrel  bracketed  it  with  John  Os- 
borne's play,  Look  Back  in  Anger, 
as  a  vigorous  expression  of  revolt 
against  conventional  middle-class 
life. 

But  Kerouac  was  born  in  Lowell, 
Massachusetts,  attended  Columbia 
College,  and  didn't  hit  the  West 
Coast  to  stay  for  any  length  of  time 
until  after  his  wartime  service  in  the 
Merchant  Marine.  Now  he  probably 
spends  as  much  time  anywhere  else 
as  in  San  Francisco. 

Except  for  Kerouac,  none  of  the 
"San  Francisco  writers"  has  made  as 
much  of  an  impression  in  the  East 
as  Kenneth  Rexroth  has  made  for 
them.  At  fifty-two,  Indiana-born 
Rexroth,  poet,  painter,  and  trans- 
lator, is  a  generation  beyond  the 
Beat;  and  he  consciously  stands 
apart  as  he  explains  them  (in  New 
World  Writing,  XI): 

"There  is  only  one  trouble  about 
the  renaissance  in  San  Francisco.  It 


is  too  far  away  from  the  literary 
market  place.  That,  of  course,  is  the 
reason  why  the  Bohemian  remnant, 
the  avant  garde  have  migrated  here. 
It  is  possible  to  hear  the  story  about 
what  so-and-so  said  to  someone  else 
at  a  cocktail  party  twenty  years  ago 
just  one  too  many  times.  You  grab 
a  plane  or  get  on  your  thumb  and 
hitchhike  to  the  other  side  of  the 
continent  for  good  and  all.  Each 
generation,  the  great  Latin  poets 
came  from  farther  and  farther  from 
Rome.  Eventually,  they  ceased  to 
even  go  there  except  to  see  the 
sights." 

After  thirty  years  in  San  Francisco, 
Rexroth  has  authority  to  talk  about 
what  he  sees  from  where  he  sits. 
More  authority,  incidentally,  than 
most  of  the  other  authors  included 
in  the  Grove  Press  publication,  San 
Francisco  Scene,  which  brought  out 
verse  and  prose  by  eighteen  writers 
last  fall.  Only  five  of  the  eighteen 
are  native  Californians  and  none  of 
these  five  rings  a  bell  in  Eastern  ears. 
The  most  famous  man  in  the  collec- 
tion is  Henry  Miller,  who  settled 
in  the  Big  Sur  about  thirteen  years 
ago  after  a  colorful  writing  career  in 
New  York  and  abroad.  Like  Rex- 
roth, he  belongs  to  the  Beat  Genera- 
tion or  the  California  Renaissance 
more  as  mentor  than  as  member, 
and  his  description  of  the  young 
experimenters  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  pieces  in  the  Grove  Press 
source  book: 

"Today  it  is  not  communities  or 
groups  who  seek  to  lead  'the  good 
life'  but  isolated  individuals.  The 
majority  of  these,  at  least  from  my 
observation,  are  young  men  who 
have  already  had  a  taste  of  profes- 
sional life,  who  have  already  been 
married  and  divorced,  who  have  al- 
ready served  in  the  armed  forces  and 
seen  a  bit  of  the  world.  .  .  .  Utterly 
disillusioned,  this  new  breed  of  ex- 
perimenter is  resolutely  turning  his 
back  on  all  that  he  once  held  true 
and  viable,  and  is  making  a  valiant 
effort  to  start  anew.  Starting  anew, 
for  .this  type,  means  leading  a 
vagrant's     life,     tackling     anything, 


Outstanding  New 
Orchestral  Records  by 


Rimsky-Korsakov:  Christmas  Eve;  Sadko;  Flight 
of  the  Bumble  Bee;  Dubinushka.  L'Orch.  de  la 
Suisse  Romande  -  Ansermet.  L L 1 733    $3.98 


Beethoven:  Piano  Concerto  No.  5  — "Emperor." 
Curzon  -  Vienna  Philharmonic  Orch.-  Knapperts- 
busch.  .   LL  1757     $3.98 


Schumann:  Symphony  No.  1— "Spring"  &  Sym- 
phony  No.    4.    London   Symphony   Orch.—  Krips. 
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A  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S  DREAM 


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Symphony  Orch.-  Maag.  LL  1707    $3.98 


® 


ONDOJV 


539  Weil  25  Si. 


22 


PERSONAL     &     OTHERWISE 


clinging  to  nothing,  reducing  one's 
needs  and  one's  desires,  and  even- 
tually—out of  a  wisdom  born  of 
desperation— leading  the  life  of  an 
artist.  Not,  however,  the  type  of 
artist  we  are  familiar  with.  An  artist, 
rather,  whose  sole  interest  is  in 
creating,  an  artist  who  is  indifferent 
to  reward,  fame,  success.  One,  in 
short,  who  is  reconciled  from  the 
outset  to  the  fact  that  the  better  he 
is  the  less  chance  he  has  of  being 
accepted  at  face  value.  These  young 
men,  usually  in  their  late  twenties  or 
early  thirties,  are  now  roaming 
about  in  our  midst  like  anonymous 
messengers  from  another  planet.  .  .  . 
When  the  smashup  comes,  as  now 
seems  inevitable,  they  are  more 
likely  to  survive  the  catastrophe  than 
the  rest  of  us.  At  least,  they  will 
know  how  to  get  along  without  cars, 
without  refrigerators,  without  vac- 
uum cleaners,  electric  razors,  and  all 
the  other  'indispensables'." 

Much  of  this  is  cliche,  to  be  sure, 
but  in  it  Miller  suggests  why  the 
New  San  Franciscans  refuse  to  stay 
put  as  a  definite  regional  growth— 
the  isolation  of  the  individuals  is 
more  important  than  the  collection 
of  their  artistic  talents.  This  in  a 
way  dignifies  them  more  than  being 
labeled  as  a  dubious  "renaissance" 
and  ties  them  to  other  writers,  dead 
and  alive,  who  made  California  their 
home  from  time  to  time:  Bret  Harte, 
Mark  Twain,  Ambrose  Beirce  almost 
a  hundred  years  ago;  Jack  London 
at  the  turn  of  the  century;  Jeffers 
of  Carmel,  Steinbeck  of  Salinas,  and 
Saroyan  of  Fresno  and  Broadway. 

.  .  .  Bruce  Bliven,  surveyor  of  the 
San  Francisco  scene  in  its  broader 
physical,  civic,  and  social  aspects 
(p.  38),  lives  in  Stanford,  California, 
now,  "in  the  middle  of  one  of  the 
most  extensive  areas  of  new  subur- 
ban tracts  in  the  whole  U.  S."  He  is 
working  on  a  book  in  the  field  of 
recent  world  history  and  also  teach- 
ing a  senior  seminar  in  mass  com- 
munications at  Stanford.  "I  live 
right  in  the  middle  of  the  9,000-acre 
campus,  surrounded  by  8,000  stu- 
dents (who  own  about  6,000  cars)" 
at  walking  distance  from  the  Center 
for  Advanced  Study  in  the  Beha- 
vioral Sciences.  This  too  is  Cali- 
fornia. 

Mr.  Bliven  was  born  in  Iowa  and 
spent  some  decades  in  New  York  as 


a  newspaperman  and  editor  of  the 
New.  Republic.  He  is  a  Stanford 
graduate  and  returned  to  live  in  the 
San  Francisco  area  about  five  years 
ago.  He  is  the  author  of  The  Men 
Who  Make  the  Future  and  the 
editor  of  Twentieth  Century  Lim- 
ited. 

.  .  .  The  least  "beat"  Californians 
alive  today  are  that  jumping  Repub- 
lican foursome— Know  land.  Knight, 
Nixon,  and  Christopher.  Vice  Presi- 
dent Nixon,  the  baby  of  the  lot, 
at  forty-four  is  almost  young  enough 
to  have  qualified  for  the  Beat 
Generation  if  he  had  got  off  to  a 
different  start;  he  is  also  the  na- 
tion's leading  prospect  for  the  next 
President.  He  has  been  in  the  na- 
tional eye  for  about  a  decade,  has 
bobbed  up  triumphant  from  a  num- 
ber of  political  pickles,  and  now  in 
what  James  Reston  calls  his  "post- 
Sputnik"  phase  is  playing  an  increas- 
ingh  important  part  in  national 
policy. 

But  besides  ambition  and  finesse, 
what  has  he  shown  as  Presidential 
qualifications?  William  S.  White, 
distinguished  Washington  corres- 
pondent of  the  New  York  Times, 
weighs  the  evidence  in  the  lead  art- 
icle this  month  (p.  25).  Mr.  White  is 
the  author  of  The  Taft  Story,  which 
won  the  Pulitzer  Prize,  and  of 
Citadel,  the  Story  of  the  U.  S. 
Senate.  He  wrote  this  article  in 
California,  where  he  has  been  serv- 
ing as  Regents  Professor  at  Berkeley. 
He  will  be  back  at  the  Capitol  this 
month. 

.  .  .  Two  very  young  writers  make 
their  first  appearance  in  a  national 
magazine  in  this  issue. 

Aubrey  Goodman,  creator  of 
"Waldo"  (p.  31),  is  twenty-two, 
Texas-born,  a  graduate  of  Phillips 
Academy  in  Andover  and  of  Yale. 
He  adapted  The  Great  Gatsby  for  a 
musical  play  scheduled  for  Broad- 
way this  year,  and  is  working  on  a 
novel,  The  Blue  of  the  Night.  At 
Yale  he  won  the  Undergraduate 
Playwriting  Contest  for  three  years 
in  a  row. 

Emilie  Bix  Buchwald  ("Song,"  p. 
61)  is  a  twenty-one-year-old  Barnard 
graduate  married  to  an  intern  and 
working  for  an  M.A.  at  Columbia. 
She  was  editor-in-chief  of  her  college 
literary  magazine,  Focus. 


.  .  .  Since  he  climbed  Mount  Everest, 
Tensing  lias  become  not  only  the 
most  famous  of  the  Sherpas,  but  also 
the  richest.  He  is  using  some  of  his 
new  wealth  to  send  his  sixteen-yeai- 
old  daughter  to  a  convent  school 
near  Darjceling. 

Recently  he  .asked  an  American 
friend— John  Hlavachek,  who  was 
United  Press  correspondent  in  India 
at  the  time  Everest  was  conquered— 
to  join  him  in  a  visit  to  the  young 
lady.  She  was  delighted  to  see  them; 
few  men,  and  practically  no  Amer- 
icans, ever  get  to  the  convent— an 
austere  and  remote  place  in  the  foot- 
hills of  the  Himalayas. 

As  they  were  leaving,  Mr.  Hlava- 
c  lick  asked  whether  he  might  send 
her  a  gift  from  the  outside  world. 

"Yes  indeed,"  she  said.  "A  very 
special  American  gift.  I  would  be 
ever  so  grateful  ii  you  would  send 
me  an  Elvis  Presley  record." 

Since  millions  of  other  adolescent 
girls,  from  Darjeeling  to  Des  Moines, 
seem  to  share  this  yearning,  Mr. 
Presley  obviously  is  a  Major  Cultural 
Inlluence.  The  reasons  for  his  pe- 
culiar charm— which  many  parents 
consider  both  horrifying  and  inex- 
plicable—are examined  on  page  45 
by  James  and  Annette  Baxter. 

Mrs.  Baxter  teaches  American 
Civilization  at  Barnard  College  and 
is  writing  a  dissertation  on  Henry 
Miller  (see  page  21  above)  for  a 
Ph.D.  at  Brown  University. 

Dr.  James  Baxter  took  medical 
training  at  Georgetown  University 
after  serving  aboard  a  minesweeper 
during  the  war.  He  worked  in  the 
Mideast  and  Europe  on  medical 
assignments  for  the  State  Depart- 
ment for  two  years  and  is  now  a  psy- 
chiatrist in  private  practice  in  New 
York  City  and  a  teacher  at  Cornell 
University  Medical  College. 

.  .  .  Admirers  of  Dylan  Thomas  will 
not  have  to  be  told  that  Lloyd 
Frankenberg's  "A  Refusal  to  Mourn, 
Etc."  (p.  47)  is  for  the  late  Welsh 
poet  and  that  its  title  is  taken  from 
one  of  his  best  loved  poems. 

Mr.  Frankenberg  has  written 
many  poems  since  his  first  volume, 
The  Red  Kite,  and  much  criticism, 
and  made  recordings  of  his  own  and 
others'  verse.  His  latest  book  pub- 
lication is  Invitation  to  Poetry:  A 
Round  of  Poems  from  John  Skelton 
to  Dylan  Thomas. 


PERSONAL     &     OTHERWISE 


.  .  .  The  Japanese  fishermen  who 
unknowingly  became  guinea  pigs  for 
the  physiological  effects  of  atomic 
fallout  are  the  heroes  of  Dr.  Ralph 
E.  Lapp's  "The  Voyage  of  the  Lucky 
Dragon"  (Part  II,  p.  48).  Their  case 
also  kicked"  up  an  international  con- 
troversy in  1954  which  has  not  yet 
ended.  Neither  have  the  nuclear 
explosions,  in  spite  of  world-wide 
agitation  against  their  continuance. 

Through  October  13  of  1957  (ac- 
cording to  a  roundup  by  John  W. 
Finney  in  the  New  York  Times),  the 
three  atomic  powers  had  set  off  more 
than  twice  as  many  atomic  explo- 
sions in  1957  as  in  any  preceding 
year.  The  total  number  has  grown 
since.  The  annual  rate  of  atomic 
testing  since  1951  has  been  as  fol- 
lows: 18,  11,  15,  4,  19,  16,  42.  The 
United  States  has  been  the  pace- 
setter, leading  always  with  its  bien- 
nial series  in  Nevada.  Of  the  42  set 
off  in  1957  (till  October),  24  were  by 
the  U.  S.,  6  by  England,  and  12  by 
Russia.  The  British  and  Russian 
tests  were  all  of  H-bombs. 

"Whether  the  accelerated  pace 
also  indicates  a  sharp  increase  in  the 
radiation  peril  to  the  world's  popu- 
lation cannot  be  answered  defi- 
nitely," Mr.  Finney  commented. 
"This  is  because  of  the  secrecy  sur- 
rounding the  circumstances  and  re- 
sults of  the  tests." 

In  this  informational  freeze-up 
about  fallout  danger,  Dr.  Lapp's  in- 
vestigation of  the  damage  to  the 
now-famous  Japanese  seamen  is 
unique.  Not  only  a  reporter  but  a 
nuclear  physicist  himself,  Dr.  Lapp 
worked  for  the  United  States  on  the 
Manhattan  Project  during  the  war 
and  headed  the  scientific  group  at 
the  Bikini  tests  of  1946.  He  was  the 
head  of  the  Nuclear  Physics  Branch 
of  the  Office  of  Naval  Research  in 
1949,  and  since  leaving  government 
service  has  been  director  of  Nuclear 
Science  Service  in  Washington.  His 
fifth  book,  The  Voyage  of  the  Lucky 
Dragon,  from  which  Harper's  three 
articles  are  adapted,  will  be  pub- 
lished in  February. 

.  .  .  Charles  B.  Seib  and  Alan  L. 
Otten,  who  present  "The  Case  of 
the  Furious  Children"  (p.  56),  are 
Washington  newspapermen.  Mr. 
Seib  is  Sunday  editor  of  the  Wash- 
ington Star  and  Mr.  Otten  covers 
Congress  for  the  Wall  Street  Journal. 


To  report  on  Dr.  Redl's  fascinating 
project  with  very  young  juvenile  de- 
linquents at  the  National  Institute 
of  Health,  they  spent  many  hours  of 
interviewing  and  of  studying  a  mass 
of  documents.  Their  previous  arti- 
cles in  Harper's  were  a  profile  of 
Senator  Fulbright  and  an  analysis  of 
the  Congressional  races  in  1956. 

.  .  .  Tomi  Ungerer,  designer  of  a 
truly  sensational  new  car  (p.  62),  is 
a  young  Frenchman  who  traveled  all 
over  Europe,  worked  with  the  Sahara 
Desert  Police  in  North  Africa,  and 
came  to  the  U.  S.  in  1956.  He  has 
published  two  children's  books  about 
a  family  of  talented  pigs  called  the 
Mellops  and  is  working  on  one 
about  a  boa  constrictor. 

...  An  English  counterpart  of 
American  self-analysis  about  educa- 
tion is  Martin  Green's  "The  Iron 
Corset  on  Britain's  Spirit"  (p.  64). 
But— as  compared  with  the  question- 
ing in  this  country  (see  "The  New 
Books,"  p.  84)— the  English  tone  is 
more  anguished,  the  scope  so  broad 
as  to  include  the  value  of  national 
symbols  and  class  structure. 

Mr.  Green  has  degrees  from  Cam- 
bridge University  and  the  Sorbonne, 
and  a  Ph.D.  from  the  University  of 
Michigan.  He  won  three  major 
Hopwood  prizes  in  1954  and  has  had 
essays  published  in  literary  maga- 
zines. He  spent  two  years  in  the 
RAF  and  is  now  teaching  at  Welles- 
ley  College  in  Massachusetts. 

.  .  .  Getting  married  is  said  to  be  as 
popular  as  ever;  but  "settling  down" 
is  no  longer  automatic.  Not  since 
the  days  of  the  covered  wagons  going 
West  have  so  many  American 
families  spent  so  large  a  part  of  their 
lives  literally  on  wheels.  Alvin  L. 
Schorr,  who  assesses  the  effects  of 
this  kind  of  social  mobility  (p.  71),  is. 
now  executive  director  of  Family 
Service  of  Northern  Virginia.  At  the 
time  of  the  Ohio  Pike  County  experi- 
ence which  was  the  "basis  of  his 
article,  he  was  on  the  spot  as  director 
for  the  Family  Service  Association. 

Mr.  Schorr,  a  graduate  of  City  Col- 
lege of  New  York,  trained  as  a  social 
worker  at  Washington  University, 
St.  Louis.  He  has  traveled  a  good 
deal,  working  for  public  and  volun- 
tary agencies;  and  his  wife  and  three 
children  came  along  with  him. 


23 


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Chairman   of  the   President's  Committee  on 
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The  Mensendieck  system  is  wholly 
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NIXON: 


What  Kind  of  President  ? 


WILLIAM    S.    WHITE 

A   Pulitzer   prize-winning   Washington 

correspondent  reports  on  a  changing  man — 

and  on  the  reasons  why  he  may  prove 

stronger  and  more  decisive  than  Ike  .  .  . 

a  tougher  hoss  of  his  party  .  .  .  and  on  some 

issues  an  ally  of  the  liberal  Democrats. 

IT  IS  now  clear  that  Richard  M.  Nixon— 
who  perhaps  is  both  the  best  known  and  the 
least  known  Vice  President  in  our  history— has  a 
better  chance  than  anyone  else  to  reach  the 
White  House,  in  1960  or  earlier. 

At  this  writing,  shortly  after  President  Eisen- 
hower's stroke,  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the 
possibility  that  Mr.  Nixon  may  be  called  upon 
to  take  over  some  measure  of  executive  responsi- 
bility before  the  next  election.  Even  if  that  does 
not  happen,  he  is  likely  to  receive  his  party's 
Presidential  nomination;  for  he  is  the  heir  pre- 
sumptive of  Eisenhower  Republicanism.  He  is, 
moreover,  perfectly  capable  on  his  record— the 
record  of  a  hard,  acute,  operationally  brilliant 
politician— of  benefiting  from  the  advantages  of 
his  present  position,  and  holding  to  a  minimum 
any  damage  that  might  threaten  that  position 


before  the  next  convention.  (The  1960  election 
is,  of  course,  a  different— and  at  this  date,  a  much 
more  speculative— question.) 

It  thus  becomes  of  some  importance  to  attempt 
to  determine  what  kind  of  President  Richard 
Nixon  might  make— not  so  much  what  kind  of 
human  being  he  is  or  was  or  might  become 
as  what  kind  of  Chief  Executive  he  might  rea- 
sonably be  expected  to  be  on  the  basis  of  such 
objective  data  as  are  at  hand. 

To  say  that  both  a  great  deal  and  very  little 
are  known  of  Richard  Nixon  is  to  state  the 
situation  as  it  is  generally  seen  in  Washington. 
The  massive  hostility  toward  him  among  the 
liberals— a  vast  proportion  of  Democratic  lib- 
erals and  a  good-sized  proportion  of  Republican 
liberals— is  an  old,  if  not  altogether  clear,  story 
now.  Not  so  well  known  is  the  not  inconsider- 
able, later  hostility  of  many  traditionalist-con- 
servatives, again  in  both  parties. 

Nothing  approaching  a  conclusive  analysis  of 
these  circumstances  is  any  part  of  this  cor- 
respondent's present  brief.  They  are  relevant 
here  simply  as  they  may  shed  some  oblique, 
fitful,  and  possibly  suggestive  light  upon  a  phe- 
nomenon: Here  is  a  Vice  President  who  has  been 
in  more  and  higher  headlines,  gone  more  places, 
had  more  part  (presumably)  in  making  high 
policy  and  more  success  (presumably)  in  influ- 
encing more  people  than  any  other  occupant  of 
that  office. 

But  here  is  also  a  man  "understood"  only  by 


26 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


people  who  really  know  nothing  about  him, 
that  is,  the  general  public;  a  man  who  is  an 
almost  total  enigma  to  most  of  the  fellow  pro- 
fessionals who  have  been  in  contact  with  him 
since  his  public  life  began  with  his  dispatch  to 
the  House  of  Representatives  from  California 
in  the  celebrated  "beefsteak  elections"  of   1946. 

As  a  Washington  reporter,  I  myself  have 
"known"  Mr.  Nixon  since  he  arrived  in  town. 
But  I  do  not,  in  fact,  know  him  in  anything 
like  the  way  I  know  fifty  other  Congressmen 
and  Senators.  It  would  not  be  an  absurdly  risky 
speculation  to  suggest  that  the  same  could  be 
said  to  a  great  extent  of  even  Nixon's  fellow 
Californian,  Senator  William  F.  Knowland.  The 
betting  is  at  least  even  that  Senator  Knowland 
does  not  know  Vice  President  Nixon  in  any 
sense  of  real  acquaintanceship,  in  spite  of  the 
chill  intimacy  of  a  kind  that  their  great  rivalry 
has  perforce  brought  about. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  unexplored  nature 
of  Mr.  Nixon  as  a  private  man  would  necessarily 
be  any  disqualification  to  his  serving  as  Presi- 
dent, but  it  does  indicate  the  special  difficulties 
of  trying  to  find  any  kind  of  certainty. 

THE     BOSS'S     DEPUTY 

THERE  is,  fortunately,  a  less  critical  short- 
age of  guides  as  to  what  kind  of  politician, 
in  the  visible  and  obvious  definition,  he  has  been, 
is,  and  might  be.  His  record  in  the  House, 
though  brief  and  obscure  except  for  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Alger  Hiss  affair,  would  put  him 
down  as  a  routine  orthodox-to-right-wing  Repub- 
lican, sufficiently  unsoft  upon  most  welfare  and 
allied  legislation  as  to  suit  the  most  management- 
minded  Republicans  of  California  or  any  other 
state.  (Parenthetically,  Nixon's  activities  in  the 
Hiss  investigation  seemed  to  me  and  to  many 
who  are  also  in  no  sense  apologists  for  excesses 
in  these  matters  to  be  quite  proper  and  within 
the  rules  of  the  game.) 

His  record  in  the  Senate  was  even  more  lack- 
ing in  distinction— it  could  hardly  have  been 
otherwise,  considering  the  short  space  of  time  he 
spent  as  a  member  upon  a  floor  over  which  he 
now  sits  as  presiding  officer,  for  the  most  part 
with  the  rather  tight-lipped,  over-tense,  and 
slightly  perspiring  manner  of  a  desperately 
earnest  man  determined  to  make  no  slightest 
mistake,  but  not  quite  at  home  and  not  likely 
to  be. 

It  is  mainly,  then,  to  his  record  as  Vice 
President  that  one  must  turn.  And  the  mere 
fact  that  he  has  got  a  Vice  Presidential  record  of 


any  consequence  is  a  tribute  both  to  his  own 
energetic  exertions  and  to  the  extraordinarily 
fortunate  political  climate  in  which  he  has 
moved. 

In  one  very  important  matter— the  care  and 
discipline  of  the  Republican  party— he  has  to  a 
considerable  extent  taken  upon  himself  the  tradi- 
tional functions  of  day-to-day  leadership  that 
have  in  the  past  been  attached  to  the  Presidency 
itself.  Eisenhower's  less  than  passionate  interest 
in  the  mere  details,  however  vital,  of  running  his 
party  has  been  so  persistent  and  so  obvious  as 
to  give  Nixon  an  almost  clear  field  in  speaking 
as  what  might  be  called  acting  co-leader  of  the 
Republican  party. 

And  here,  as  practically  everywhere  else, 
Nixon  has  been  lucky  almost  beyond  belief: 
he  has  been  able  to  give  party  directions,  on 
many  occasions  at  least,  with  substantially  the 
motive  power  they  would  have  had  if  they  had 
come  direct  from  the  White  House.  At  the  same 
time  he  has  not  been  required  to  take  ultimate 
responsibility  for  the  outcome. 

He  has  done  all  this,  by  the  way,  with  great 
skill  and  tact.  Publicly  and  privately  he  has  left 
the  impression  of  an  eager  and  loyal  Eisenhower 
subordinate,  speaking  humbly  for  the  Boss,  or, 
as  the  Modern  Republicans  would  undoubtedly 
put  it,  the  Captain  of  the  Team. 

Generally  it  has  been  in  this  role,  as  a  rather 
casually  appointed  Eisenhower  deputy-for-party- 
affairs,  that  Nixon  has  wholly  reversed  his  earlier 
reputation  as  an  orthodox  Republican.  He  is 
now  widely  considered  an  operating  spokesman 
in  Congress  for  the  "Modern"  Republicans— a 
leader  ready  to  warn  and  cajole  the  right-wingers 
against  isolationism,  for  example,  and  to  put  in 
timely  admonitions  for  such  projects  as  foreign 
aid. 

There  is  no  clear  public  record  to  show  on 
what  specific  issues  he  has  acted  as  deputy  leader 
of  the  party  or  in  just  what  way  he  has  acted— 
how  spiritedly,  effectively,  and  under  what  per- 
sonal intellectual  convictions.  But  perhaps  a 
single  example  of  his  performance— in  a  unique 
Republican  party  crisis— will  throw  some  light. 

In  the  sticky,  embarrassing  matter  of  the  late 
Senator  Joseph  McCarthy,  Nixon's  friends  and 
associates  have  long  presented  him  as  a  powerful, 
if  sub-surface,  agent  who  attempted  to  liquidate 
the  problem  for  Republicans  generally.  What 
Nixon  actually  did  about  it  is,  like  a  good  many 
other  things  in  his  career,  difficult  to  ascertain 
exactly.  His  curiously  sheltered  position— deeply 
in  the  Administration  but  not  necessarily  or 
always  of  it,  and  not  directly  accountable  either 


NIXON:     WHAT     KIND     OF     PRESIDENT? 


27 


to  it  or  for  its  decisions— has  meant  that  most  of 
his  actions  have  been  made  known  on  a  leaked 
or  ex-parte  basis. 

One  heard  that  he  had  often  "talked  to  Joe"; 
that  he  had  spoken  firm  words  to  the  unregen- 
erate  McCarthyites  like  Senator  William  E. 
Jenner  of  Indiana  who  stayed  with  McCarthy 
up  to  and  through  what  was,  in  soberest  truth, 
the  bitter  end.  My  own  information  is  that 
Nixon  did  assist  in  the  destruction  of  Mc- 
Carthy's power,  but  that  at  no  time  did  he  risk 
any  final  or  open  rupture  with  the  McCarthy- 
ites, and  that  his  assistance  was  of  incomparably 
less  value  than  the  work  of  those  who  actually 
brought  McCarthy  down— primarily  the  con- 
servative Senate  Southerners  under  the  spur  of 
the  liberals. 

Nixon's  view  of  McCarthy  revealed  the  oddly 
glacial  detachment  that  is,  in  practical  political 
terms,  unquestionably  toward  the  top  of  his 
list  of  assets.  There  was  never  anything  to  sug- 
gest that  he  felt  any  horror  over  what  McCarthy- 
ism  embodied  in  its  historical  implications— 
that  is,  a  long  and  violent  assault  upon  the 
heart  of  politics  as  practiced  by  the  English- 
speaking  peoples:  the  principle  of  fair  play. 

There  was,  however,  everything  to  suggest 
that  in  due  course— or  at  long  last— Nixon 
brought  a  cool  surgeon's  knife  into  a  clinic  of 
worried  Republicans,  who  had  become  gravely 
concerned  over  the  threshings  about  of  an  en- 
"  fevered  and  dangerous  patient  now  about  to 
infect  and  destroy  their  own  people. 

On  the  evidence  of  this  episode,  what  would 
Nixon  do  in  a  Nixon  Administration  if  another 
McCarthy  should  arise?  The  probabilities  are 
that  he  would  (a)  not  allow  such  a  rise,  within 
his  own  party  at  least;  or  (b)  if  he  could  not 
prevent  its  arising,  simply  move  in,  take  over, 
and  reshape  the  underlying  issue  so  that  it 
might  serve  first  himself  and  then  his  party. 

Unchecked  McCarthyism  would  be  highly 
unlikely  to  exist  in  a  Nixon  Administration, 
if  only  because  it  is  essentially  anarchic.  Nixon, 
make  no  mistake,  is  a  contained,  long-headed 
man,  who  would  take  great  care  to  see  that  his 
Administration  and  his  party  were  operated 
without  emotionalism.  Certainly  he  is  capable 
of  emotionalism  on  the  highest  and  most  pro- 
ductive scale,  as  he  proved  in  his  appeal  to  the 
country,  with  the  assistance  of  his  little  dog 
Checkers,  when  suddenly  revealed  financial  con- 
tributions to  his  career  seemed  about  to  cut 
off  that  career  in  mid-flight.  But  he  is  not  the 
sort  of  a  man  who  would  make  emotionalism  a 
consecutive  instrument  of  public  policy;  he  will 


use  it,  but  then  he  will  abandon  it.  The  essen- 
tial weakness  in  the  McCarthy  melodrama  was 
that  it  was  poorly  plotted;  you  cannot  forever 
sustain  any  unrelieved  emotion,  not  even  fear. 

BACK    AND     FORTH    ON 
CIVIL     RIGHTS 

TAKING  McCarthyism  as  an  example 
of  one  aspect  of  an  unending  contest, 
what  could  be  said  of  a  President  Nixon's  prob- 
able cast  of  mind  and  mode  of  action  in  civil 
liberties  in  general?  One  might  hazard  with 
some  conviction  that  his  position  would  not  be 
a  bad  one,  measured  by  results.  Yet  once  again, 
the  why  of  his  probable  liberal  stance— whether 
the  underlying  reason  would  be  instinctive  sym- 
pathy for  civil  liberties  or  simply  a  practical 
means  to  a  practical  political  end— is  open  to 
doubt. 

Nixon's  activities  in  the  Senate  Civil  Rights 
struggle  last  summer  answered  some  surface 
questions,  but  left  other,  deeper  ones  unre- 
solved. He  took  up  early,  and  abandoned  late 
and  only  by  necessity,  a  position  for  a  "hard" 
Civil  Rights  bill— a  bill  that  on  the  plain  facts 
of  the  existing  situation  certainly  could  not 
have  been  passed  and,  quite  possibly,  could 
never  have  been  enforced  short  of  a  national 
convulsion  that  few  rational  men  would  wish 
to  see. 

The  Vice  President  was  more  than  a  little 
vulnerable  to  the  accusation  that  he  wanted  an 
issue  more  than  a  bill.  When,  for  example,  the 
Senate  wrote  in  the  right  of  jury  trial  in  federal 
criminal  contempt  actions,  he  coolly  asserted 
that  this  was  nothing  less  than  "a  vote  against 
the  right  to  vote."  This  tersely,  enormously 
incorrect  statement  of  the  position  was  vintage 
Nixon;  the  act  of  a  man  coldly  impatient  with 
the  President's  refusal  to  defend  his  proposal  by 
such  extremism.  It  was  precisely  the  sort  of 
thing  that  Nixon  had  done  in  1954  in  his 
stonily  bitter  personal  campaign  to  return  con- 
trol of  Congress  to  the  Republicans. 

Nevertheless,  the  charge  that  Nixon  really 
wanted  no  Civil  Rights  bill  at  all  in  1957,  in 
the  hope  that  the  failure  of  a  Democratic  Con- 
gress in  that  regard  would  mean  a  Republican 
Congress  in  1958,  is  not  fully  supportable— no 
stronger  verdict  than  the  Scottish  "not  proved" 
can  lie  here.  One  or  two  talks  I  had  with  him 
fairly  well  convinced  me  that  he  was  maintain- 
ing a  surpassingly  "tough"  position  for  legiti- 
mate bargaining  purposes,  and  that  it  was  less 
subtle  Republicans,  particularly  in  the  House, 


28                                                ii  \  R  P  i ■:  r  s  M  A.G  vzi  N  E 

who   misread   the  signals  and   carried    intransi-  He   has  cast    aside   effectively   and    whatever 

gence  loo  i. ii  his   piotive   for  doing  so   certain   <>l    the  over- 

\i    .ill   events   he   was   read)    to   light    for   ;i  simplified  catch-phrases  with  wl)i<li  h<-  used  to 

"strong"  Civil  Rights  bill,  though  any  Buch  en  be  associated  in  Ins  old  days  as  .1  professional 

.iiiiniiii    would    lose   linn    the   support    oi    the  "anti-Communist."    He  is  represented  as  believ- 

South  certainly   and   to  .1   lessei    bui   important  ing    and,  more  importantly,  he  acts  .is  though 

sense  oi   ni.iiix   ol   ih.    oldei   .mil  orthodox   Re  li<    believed    thai    ii    is   nol    enough   simply    to 

publicans,    lie  thus  became  the  lull   inheritoi  make  certain   thai    nobod)   else  could   possibly 

oi    .in    already    foreshadowed    legacy    the    im-  be  seen  1  < >  hate  Communists  more, 

mensel)    important    gratitude   <>l    \ast    blocs   <>l  Such  oi  his  attitudes  and  activities  on  foreign 

Negro   voters,    in   tin    process   the   Republican  policy  within  the  National  Securit)  Council  as 

leadei  who  did  fai  1 ■  to  bring  "ii  something  are  known    assuming  thai  the)  have  been  accu- 

substantial    on    Civil     Rights,     Knowland     oi  ratel)     represented    in    the    journalism-by-leak 

California,  goi  fai   less  credii  Eoi  bis  pains.  with  which  he  is  surrounded    suggesi  an  adult, 

Bui   all  during   this  time  a   suspicion   about  ii    nol    necessarily    responsible,   approach.     I  1 1<- 

Nixon  that  had  been  vaguel)  held  before  grew  quotient   ol   responsibility  cannoi   be  accurately 

strongei  and  stronger:  thai  on  <i\il  liberties,  as  assayed  because  the  Vice  Presideni    again  there 

perhaps  <>n  othei  matters,  he  was  on  the  "light"  is  thai   persistent   theme  <>i   amazing  good   l«>i- 

side   im    inadequate   reasons;    thai    he  did    nol  tune    can,  "i  course,  i><'  boldly  decisive  verbally 

qualify   among    thai    group   oi    politicians,    Ise  in  the  NSC  and  still  nol  l>e  held  blameworthy 

publicans,  Democrats,  whatnot,  whose  inherited  il  a  course  he  proposes  turns  out  badly, 

memories  and  simple  instincts  require  them  10  All    in    all,    though,    what    evidence   can    be 

respeel  the  deep  convictions,  and  even  the  deep  gathered    suggests    that    a    Nixon     Presidency 

prejudices,  <>i  an)   large  mil ty,  and  who  are  would    be    a    "stronger,"    more    decisive    one 

unwilling   to  press   upon   such   a   minorit)    any  on    Eoreign    policy    than    Eisenhower's    though 

law   01   policy  thai   would  he  tiulv  intolerable,  "stronger"    does    not    necessarily    equate    with 

and  nol  merel)  repugnant,  to  them,  "better."    A    Nixon   Administration   would   nol 

ihis   sensitive,    automatii    understanding    <>l  onl)    find    the    President    his  own   Secretar)    ol 

whai    simpl)    isni    done    in    government    isn'i  State;  the  country  and  the  world  would  be  in 

done    no    mallei     il    one    chalk    has    ihe    \oles    lo  no   douhl    ol    who    was    running    the    show.     Il    is 

do  ii    is  the  one  subtle  distinguishing  quality  extremely   unlikely  that  matters  in  any  critical 

thai   inosi  oi  .dl  seis  oil   British  and    American  area  of  the  world  would  be  allowed  to  drift  as 

publii    men  I all  others,    11   tins  quality  is  the    Eisenhowei    Administration   allowed    them 

in    1. hi   absent    in    Nixon,   ii    would   lie  at    the  to  in  the  Middle  East,    The  publii   might   not 

tool   oi   every    prediction    thai    could    be   made  like  the  action  ii  got;  hut  it  would  get  action. 

as  lo  what   kind  ol    President    he  would   make,  on 

an)  issue  whatever,  with  the  possible  exception 
ol  foreign  polu  \ 

Foreign  policy,  to  be  sure,  can  b)   us  nature  i        OULD    Nixon  manage  to  accommodate 

be    pi. ed    and    (.lined    out    within    a    country  V.       social   and  sectional  animosities  as  well  as, 

otherwise  deepl)  divided  and  lacking  thai  con-  sa\,   Eisenhowei    has  done?    1>\    no  means.    Mis 

sensus  oi    publii    support    ol    01    toleration    for  techniques  of  campaigning  show  he  is  at  his  most 

us  leaders  thai   alone    can  provide  an  effective  effective  where  a  certain,  though  i>\   no  means 

ei\ilu\     in    the    conduct    ol    iis    d si  k     allaus.  total.    di\isi\cness    is    the    result,    il    not    actually 

(llan\     S       I  mini. m     and     Dean      \cheson     i.ui     a  the   aim.     One   can    picture   a    Nixon    binding    up 

powerful,     imaginative,     and     even     audacious  the  wounds  of  a  majority  of  a  nation,  but  not  the 

foreign     policy     without      important      positive  whole  oi  a  nation. 

(lucks  from  Congress  in  the  ver)    months  .w\(\  Could  Nixon  operate  in  a  bipartisan  wax   in 

years  when  a  mere  Truman  endorsement   ol  a  certain  areas  oi  polic)    foreign  affairs  mainly— as 

domestic  program  was  enough  10  give  ii  the  kiss  1  isenhower  has  done  and  as  even   I  ruman  did  10 

ol  death.)    \nd  it  is  in  foreign  affairs  that   die  .1  considerable  degree,  until  at  last  the  bitterness 

available  evidence  suggests  thai    Nixon,   in   the  ol  Korea  overcame  all?    rhe  answer  is  a  qualified 

common  phrase,  "has  grown."    Ilis  man)   nips  no,  necessarily  qualified  because  of  the  difficulties 

abroad  seem  10  have  been  unquestionabl)  useful  oi  definition,   li  the  cpiestion  is  merely  whether 

10  this  countr)    mainl)  he-cause  the)  have  been  Nixon   could   marshal   enough   bi-partisan   sup- 

useiui  10  Richard  M    Nixon.  port   for  his  foreign  policies,  the  repl)   is  that 


I  II  i:     HA  LANCE     SHEET 


NIXON:     WHAT     KIND     OF     PRESIDENT? 


29 


he  probably  could,  for  he  would  never  offer  a 
major  turn  in  policy,  first,  without  knowing  that 
the  great  bulk  of  the  Republicans  were  bound 
reliably  in  line,  and,  second,  without  putting 
into  that  policy  a  content  that  would  require— as 
distinguished  from  solicit— adequate  Democratic 
support. 

Outside  of  foreign  affairs,  he  could  certainly 
be  expected  to  stress  the  partisan.  One  cannot 
readily  think  of  any  other  candidate  who  would 
come  to  office  with  so  little  intrinsic  good  will 
from  the  other  party.  All  the  same,  in  the  in- 
tractable reality  of  politics  it  is  the  feared  Presi- 
dent, iar  more  than  the  liked  President,  who  at 
length  forces  the  greater  backing  from  among  his 
opposition;  and  Nixon  could  not  be  accounted 
ineffectual  on  this  score. 

Odd  as  it  sounds,  a  President  Nixon  would 
probably  evoke  more  practical  support  from  ad- 
vanced Democratic  liberals  than  from  the  con- 
servative Democrats,  because  the  liberal  Con- 
gressional Republicans  would  be,  at  least  in  the 
beginning,  more  favorably  disposed  toward  him 
than  the  orthodox  Republicans,  and  because  the 
conservative  Democrats  are  men  who  do  not 
forget  and  are  as  a  class  less  bound  to  consistent, 
impersonal  action  on  issues  than  are  their  liberal 
colleagues.  What  the  conservative  and  moderate 
Democrats  do  not  forget  is  not  really  what  Nixon 
has  said  in  the  past  about  their  party,  but  what 
he  did  on  Civil  Rights. 

Could  Nixon  operate  the  Republican  party 
as  a  partisan  instrument  more  effectively  than 
has  President  Eisenhower?  Certainly  more  tidily 
and  efficiently.  Probably  more  effectively,  with 
one  qualification:  His  Civil  Rights  position  un- 
doubtedly would,  with  him  as  the  nominee,  at 
least  momentarily  arrest  the  two-party  movement 
in  the  South.  It  might  in  the  long  run  forward 
that  movement,  however,  if  and  as  Negro  voting 
in  the  South  greatly  rises  in  volume. 

While  the  Vice  President  has  never  to  my 
knowledge  even  privately  criticized  Eisenhower 
as  a  party  leader,  he  is  a  member  of  a  funda- 
mentally different  breed  from  that  of  his  present 
chief— and  he  can  make  this  plain  without  a 
single  remotely  disloyal  word.  Any  party  under 
Nixon  would  know  who  was  its  master,  by  bland 
but  unmistakably  firm  techniques.  There  would 
be  a  great  deal  less  talk  about  the  Team  and  a 
great  deal  more  about  the  Captain. 

Nixon  would  welcome  no  intra-party  fight.  He 
would  offer  no  major  "Administration"  bill  with- 
out knowing  its  content  down  to  the  last  dis- 
tilled comma,  without  knowing  that  no  signifi- 
cant number  of  Republicans  would  or  could  de- 


Hounds  Across  the  Sea 


M 


E  M  B  E  R  S  of  the  Holderness  Hunt  to- 
night recovered  two  foxhounds  which 
went  down  a  drain  at  Catfoss  aerodrome 
in  the  East  Riding  on  Tuesday.  They 
also  found  the  fox,  but  it  got  away. 

The  hounds  disappeared  during  a 
cubbing  meet,  and  it  was  not  until  late 
tonight  that  a  policeman's  dog  located 
them  in  the  drain,  half  a  mile  from 
where  they  were  last  seen.  After  they 
had  been  run  to  earth  the  rescuers  bat- 
tered a  hole  through  a  runway,  and 
found  hounds  and  fox  standing  in  four 
inches  of  water  in  the  narrow  drain. 
The  hounds  were  wedged  and  could  not 
turn;  the  fox,  smaller  and  more  active, 
had  turned  round  and  stood  at  a  safe 
distance  from  them. 

—London  Times,  September  27,  1957. 


feet,  and  without  an  implacable  intention  to 
put  it  through  unaltered.  If  he  did  get  into  an 
intra-party  fight,  he  would  be  a  tough  man  in- 
deed. Nixon,  in  common  with  many  of  the 
younger  Republicans,  is  soft  in  speech  (except 
of  course  against  Democrats)  but  hard  in  action. 
The  Old  Guard  Republicans,  who  do  not  as  a 
class  care  very  much  for  him,  will  find  that  in 
Nixon  they  have  in  their  time  much  the  sort  of 
antagonist  that  the  Taft  Republicans  of  the 
past  had  in  Dewey  of  New  York— a  powerful, 
single-minded  antagonist  who  hits  to  hurt,  plays 
to  win,  and,  in  crisis,  believes  that  nice  guys 
finish  last. 

Nixon  has  far  greater  skill  in  day-to-day  po- 
litical operating  than  Eisenhower— and  indeed 
than  Truman,  who  was  in  fact  an  incomparably 
better  President  than  politician,  all  the  contrary 
folklore  notwithstanding.  Certain  things  would 
be  very  different  in  a  Nixon  Administration  than 
in  either  of  the  two  that  went  before.  Trouble- 
some "cronies"  would  not  bother  him  long,  as 
they  did  the  far  more  kindly  and  perhaps  over- 
loyal  Truman.  Department  heads  would  not 
twice  be  at  cross  purposes  in  public,  as  on  occa- 
sion they  have  been— and  without  known  rebuke 
—under  the  somewhat  amiably  withdrawn  Presi- 
dent Eisenhower. 

But  the  essential  philosophy  of  a  Nixon  Ad- 
ministration would  be  as  difficult  to  find  and 
fix,  in  any  permanent  frame  of  reference,  as  the 


30 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


essential  philosophy  of  Politician  Nixon  so  far. 
To  deduce  from  this  that  he  is  not  "a  man  of 
principle"  would  be  both  too  harsh  and  too  sim- 
ple. One  of  the  Vice  President's  closest  associates 
once  told  me  that  his  whole  success  lay  in  two 
things— sensing  "the"  issue  of  the  hour  and  ex- 
ploiting it  by  "perfect  timing." 

Rephrased,  this  means  that  Nixon  draws  his 
notions,  his  policies,  and  even  his  philosophy 
from  "the  people"— or  what  he  considers  to  be 
the  operative  majority  of  them  at  a  given  time. 
He  is,  that  is  to  say,  the  perfect  model  of  the 
political  leader  who  finds  both  inspiration  and 
ultimate  mandate  from  the  public.  This  is  no 
more  and  no  less  than  the  logically  inevitable 
requirement  of  a  current— and  possibly  dominant 
—view  that  the  proper  functioning  of  a  democ- 
racy requires  little  more  than  a  count  of  noses 
to  determine  what  should  be  done. 


THE     NEW     BREED 

PU  T  in  another  way,  Nixon  is  the  quintes- 
sence of  the  modern  spirit  of  revolt  from 
the  aristocratic  principle  of  the  leader.  In  this 
sense  he  differs  sharply  from  Franklin  Roosevelt. 
Roosevelt  served  the  common  man— by  boldly 
directing  that  man's  affairs  and,  not  to  put  too 
fine  a  point  upon  it,  by  telling  him  what  to 
think.  Nixon  appeals  to  the  common  man— by 
asking  him  what  he  thinks  or,  at  most,  by  sug- 
gesting to  him  that  perhaps  he  thinks  so  and  so. 
Harry  Truman,  archetype  of  small  d  democrat 
though  he  is,  was,  oddly  enough,  full  of  the 
aristocratic  principle.  In  every  moment  of  ulti- 
mate truth  or  ultimate  peril,  he  acted  for  the 
people,  not  by  their  leave.  And,  to  tell  the  truth, 
when  the  issue  was  big  enough  and  critical 
enough,  he  didn't  much  give  a  damn,  as  they  say 
in  Missouri,  whether  they  liked  it  or  not.  He 
would  save  them,  whether  or  not  they  wanted  to 
be  saved;  but  he  never  applied  to  them  for  his 
instructions. 

Perhaps  it  is  this  quality  of  oneness  with  what 
ordinary  people  are  thinking  or  are  about  to 
think  that  has  made  Nixon  one  of  the  most  spec- 
tacularly reliable  private  oracles  in  the  business 
of  predicting  political  results.  To  my  well- 
remembered  knowledge,  he  got,  as  a  then  young 
Congressman  out  doing  minor  chores  for  the 
Republican  Congressional  Campaign  Committee, 
more  than  an  intimation  of  the  oncoming  un- 
seen Republican  debacle  of  1948  as  early  as 
September  of  that  year.  There  is  a  bleak  realism 
about  what  he  tells  fellow  Republicans  in  private 
on  any  existing  situation  involving  public  opin- 


ion or  public  taste.  His  antennae  are  remark- 
ably acute— matchlessly  acute  among  the  na- 
lional  politicians  known  to  this  correspondent. 

How  he  might  handle  almost  any  issue  as 
President— from  management  of  the  economy  to 
the  proper  place  for  the  Pentagon  in  the  scheme 
of  things— would  almost  certainly  be  strongly 
colored  by  this  foreknowledge. 

This  not  only  makes  it  bootless  to  speculate 
whether  he  would  be  "liberal"  or  "conservative"; 
it  puts  it  out  of  the  question  to  attempt  to 
appraise  what  he  would  be  like  as  an  adminis- 
trative man.  For  top  administration  necessarily 
implies  a  fairly  free  and  relaxed  association  with 
colleagues,  a  capacity  wisely  to  delegate  and 
sharply  to  supervise  without  appearing  to  do  so. 

Nixon's  essentially  intuitive  approach  would 
seem  difficult  to  transfer  or  to  delegate;  and  not 
enough  is  known  of  his  associations  by  choice— 
as  distinguished  from  routine  necessity— to  give 
any  very  reliable  guide  as  to  his  private  taste  in 
men.  His  various  Capitol  offices  operate,  upon 
casual  observation,  with  what  is  at  least  out- 
wardly a  brisk  efficiency  not  quite  typical  of  those 
precincts.  But  Nixon  himself  is  a  man  who,  in 
the  true  sense,  is  often  by  himself  apart. 

Talking  to  him,  one  has  the  impression  of 
speaking  to  an  almost  incredibly  objective  per- 
son. His  mind  examines  statements,  hypotheses, 
implications,  with  a  chill,  uninvolved  clarity  of 
purpose  and  functioning.  His  sense  of  percep- 
tion is  sharp  and  quick;  what  feeling  may  lie 
within  him  is  unguessable.  It  is  a  close  question 
whether  he  would  rather  be  liked  by  people  in 
the  mass  or  approved  by  people  in  the  mass.  In 
my  opinion  he  would  much  rather  be  approved. 

There  have  been  several  changes  in  him  since 
he  first  came  to  Washington— nearly  all,  on  the 
discernible  evidence,  to  the  good.  He  is  now 
mature;  there  is  a  certain  tough  resignation  in 
him.  Good  President  or  bad  President  as  he 
might  be,  he  would  hardly  be  a  weak  one,  and 
it  is  not  easy  to  imagine  him  being  an  indecisive 
one.  Never  an  outgoing  personality,  he  has  be- 
come even  more  withdrawn.  His  sense  of  humor 
is  thin  and  a  bit  brittle,  with  a  quiet  but  distinct 
touch  of  mordant.  He  is  immensely  controlled, 
and  there  is  a  suggestion  that  this  control  in- 
volves sustained  effort.  There  is  not  a  chemical 
trace  of  gustiness  in  him;  and  it  is  impossible 
to  down  the  impression  that  he  rarely  has  a 
relaxed  moment.  He  is  poised,  able,  seemingly 
confident,  compact  and  well  buttoned  up  in  dress 
and  address,  habitually  earnest,  and  very  remote. 
Most  of  all,  perhaps,  he  is  mindful  of  the  phrase: 
He  travels  fastest  who  travels  alone. 


A  Story  by  AUBREY  GOODMAN 

Drawings  by  Stanley  Wyatt 


MY  FATHER  took  me  to  lunch  at  the 
Yale  Club  and  gave  me  some  advice 
about  the  next  four  years,  telling  all  ot  the 
Waldo  stories  again  and  advising  me  not  to  listen 
to  any  advice  from  my  older  brother  who  had 
graduated,  just  barely,  from  Yale  the  previous 
spring.  After  lunch  I  went  over  to  Brooks  and 
bought  some  Argyle  socks  and  some  neckties,  and 
then,  it  was  such  a  nice  September  day  and  New 
York  looked  so  terrific  and  I  felt  so  good,  I 
walked  all  the  way  up  Fifth  Avenue  to  Eightieth 
Street.  It  was  nearly  four  o'clock  when  I  got  up 
to  the  apartment  and  Johnnie  was  sitting  on  my 
bed,  smoking  a  cigarette. 

"Hey,"  he  said.  "Eve  been  waiting  for  you." 

"I  had  to  pick  up  some  stuff,"  I  said,  dumping 
my  packages  on  the  desk. 

"Excited  about  tomorrow?"  Johnnie  asked. 

"Sure." 

"How  was  lunch?  I  suppose  Dad  told  you  not 
to  pay  any  attention  to  anything  I  might  have 
to  say." 

I  nodded  and  started  to  finish  my  packing.  He 
put  a  pillow  under  his  head  and  went  on  talking 
to  the  ceiling. 

"Well,  just  don't  take  everything  Dad  says  too 
literally.  You  don't  think  he  thinks  Ed  try  to 
steer  you  wrong,  do  you?" 

"No,"  I  replied,  trying  to  find  my  silver  tie-tac 
on  the  tray  on  top  of  my  dresser. 

"You  know,  I  was  there.  I  just  graduated  this 
year  from  Yale  and  I  know  more  about  it  than 
Dad.  What  did  he  do?  Tell  you  those  old  worn- 
out  stories  about  Waldo?" 


I  nodded. 

All  my  life  I  had  heard  people,  not  just  my 
father,  but  other  men  who  had  been  at  Yale  with 
him  back  in  the  'twenties,  talk  about  Waldo. 
And  from  all  of  the  stories  I  had  evolved  a  pretty 
clear,  but  certainly  romantic,  picture  of  Waldo. 

Evidently,  Waldo  had  been  a  hero  of  Yale. 
Not  just  the  hero  of  the  athletes  or  the  intel- 
lectuals or  the  fraternity  and  Senior  Society  men; 
he  was  everyone's  hero.  He  seemed  to  have  some 
hard  mysterious  glow  inside  him,  some  vitality, 
that  attracted  people  to  him.  They  watched  him 
when  he  walked  down  the  street,  they  crowded 
around  him  at  parties,  professors  were  always 
pleased  to  have  him  in  their  classes,  and  girls 
from  Smith  and  Vassar  actually  begged  to  be 
introduced  to  him. 

According  to  those  who  had  known  him, 
Waldo  possessed  all  of  those  golden  qualities 
usually  attributed  to  Dink  Stover  and  the 
Byronic  young  men  created  by  Scott  Fitzgerald. 
Waldo  was  tall,  had  very  green  eyes  and  close-cut 
yellow  hair,  and  all  of  his  clothes  came  from 
Brooks.  He  drove  a  fast  Mercedes  Runabout, 
but  he  never  ran  into  anyone  and  never  got  a 
ticket. 

The  really  curious  thing  about  him  was  that 
no  one  really  knew  him  well;  people  could  never 
get  close  enough  to  him  to  know  him  completely. 
Waldo  was  just  there;  he  just  was.  No  one  knew 
where  he  lived.  He  was  seen  at  the  big  dances 
at  the  Plaza  during  Christmas  vacation,  he 
turned  up  in  Bermuda  every  spring,  and  he  went 
to  Europe  during  the  summer.    He  drank  beer 


32 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


for  breakfast  and  a  split  ol  champagne  with  his 

lunch  every  day.  He  liked  to  play  mild  practical 
jokes:   he  often  put  live  goldfish   in   toilets. 

At  one  Harvard-Yale  game  he  and  his  date 
tode  to  the  game  on  a  beautiful  white  horse.  His 
junior  year,  he  brought  Joan  Crawford  to  the 
Prom,  and  they  danced  the  Charleston  for  an 
hour  without  stopping.  Another  time  he  was 
involved  in  a  rather  elaborate  stunt:  Waldo  let 
his  feet  he  strapped  to  the  wings  ol  an  airplane 
which  took  oil  and  Hew  under  the  Brooklyn 
Bridge,  with  Waldo  standing  up.  waving  happily 
to  his  li  iends  standing  up  on  the  bridge. 

Waldo  enjoyed  himself.  He  was  exciting  and 
casual  and  lull  of  Inn,  and  people  liked  him. 
Alter  graduation  no  one  ever  saw  him  again,  but 
there  was  a  rumor  that  lie  had  been  killed  in  the 
second  world  war. 

"You  won't  find  anyone  like  Waldo  up  at  Yale 
today.''  m\  lather  always  said.  "Waldo  could 
only  have  existed  hack  in  the  'twenties.  You 
boys  now— you'it1  scared  and  worried  and  grim, 
because  you  have  to  he.  But  nobody  blames 
you.  That's  just  the  way  things  are.  People  don't 
know  how  to  enjoy  themselves  now,  and  even  if 
the)  did — they  couldn't." 

I  CLOSED  one  of  the  suitcases  and  put  it 
out  in  the  hall. 

"You're  taking  too  much  with  you,"  Johnnie 
said  when  I  (ante  hack  into  the  room.  He  was 
lying  on  his  stomach  and  staring  at  me.  "Don't 
take  too  much  with  you,  that's  my  motto.  Do 
you  want  my  cashmere  sweaters?  Guess  I  won't 
need  them  out  on  the  Bounding  Main." 

Johnnie  was  going  into  the  Navy  the  next 
month.  "Thanks  a  lot,"  1  said,  sitting  down  on  a 
c  hah  next  to  the  bed. 

Johnnie  sat  up  suddenly,  ciossccl  his  legs, 
squinted  his  eyes  at  me  and  took  a  deep  breath. 
Whenever  somebody  does  that,  you  know  they're 
going  to  do  a  lot  of  talking.  I  sat  hack  in  the 
chair  and   relaxed. 

"You  don't  have  to  listen  to  me,  Tony.  No- 
body can  really  give  anyone  else  any  advice,  and 
God  knows  I  never  listened  to  anybody,  but  you 
are  my  brother  and  there  are  a  couple  ol  things." 

"Okay,"   I   said.    "Shoot." 

"Well,  I  don't  know.  First  thing,  when  you 
get  up  there,  don't  think  for  a  moment  that 
coming  from  Andover  makes  you  special.  Every- 
body is  always  yakking  about  the  Andover  crowd 
at  Yale,  but  there's  no  such  thing.  At  least,  not 
any  more.  It's  different  now,  not  like  it  was 
when  Dad  was  there." 

"1  know." 


"The  important  thing,"  he  continued,  "is  to 
watch  the  people  around  you.  So  many  things 
start  happening  to  people  during  theii  college 
years.  So  far  you've  been  pretty  damned  shel- 
tered." 

I  stalled  to  protest,  but  he  cut  me  off  with  a 
wave  of  his  hand. 

"I  know  that  annoys  you,  but  it's  true.  You'll 
see  it  later.  It's  just  that  once  you  hit  college  you 
start  seeing  things  go  wrong  for  people.  Just  look 
at  most  ol  the  guys  I've  known,  and  it  seems  that 
nearly  all  of  them  went  around  trying  to  kill 
themselves.  I  knew  this  one  guy  at  Harvard— a 
real  great  guy,  always  hacking  around  and  cut- 
ting up,  making  jokes,  making  people  laugh.  He 
seemed  perfectly  happy  to  me.  Then  one  night 
he  took  a  taxi  to  Logan  Airport  and  walked  into 
the'  propellers  ol  a  plane.  Another  friend  of 
mine  chank  so  much  he  went  temporarily  blind. 
And  guys  got  into  all  kinds  of  trouble  with  girls 
—marrying  them  because  they  were  rich  or  preg- 
nant or  looked  like  the  guys'  mothers.  I  know 
two  guys  who  got  married,  had  two  kids  each, 
and  then  got  divorces.  They're  only  twenty-one 
years  old  now!" 

I   shook   my   head. 

"Then  there  are  the  guys  who  want  to  he 
scholars  or  archaeologists  who  go  back  home  and 
work  for  theii  dads  or  go  on  to  law  school 
because  they  let  other  people  influence  them  too 
much.  Too  many  people  give  up  what  they 
really  want  to  do  with  their  lives.  They  toss 
theii   dreams  away." 

Johnnie  looked  sort  of  sad  lor  a  moment,  star- 
ing past  me,  Then  he  sat  up  straight  and  went 
on. 

"And  then  there  are  all  of  the  guys  who  are 
left  out  of  things  because  they  went  to  high 
schools  instead  of  prepping.  There's  quite  a  bit 
of  hypocrisy  and  snobbery  you  get  mixed  up  in 
without  even  realizing  it.  Hut  it's  all  confused 
and  mixed  up,  because  it's  great  too.  Most  of 
I  he  classes  arc  damned  terrific  il  you  listen  and 
lead  everything  and  the  weekends  are  gorgeous 
fun  and  the  girls  are  pretty  .  .  .  it's  good  and 
had,  all  mixed  up.  I  loved  it  when  1  was  there, 
but  I  don't  think  1  knew  what  I  was  really  doing. 
You  know,  in  my  fraternity  there  was  one  guy 
who  didn't  get  elected  because  he  turned  up  for 
rushing  one  night  wearing  machine-made  Argyle 
soc  ks!  Does  that  make  any  sense?" 

"Not  to  me,"   I   replied. 

"Hut  it  did  make  sense  then!  At  least,  it 
seemed  to.  It's  all  confusing.  Everybody  I  knew 
ended  up  by  making  some  huge  compromise. 
Hut  you  can't  help  it.     The  main  thing  is  that 


WALDO 


there  isn't  any  romance  in  it  any  more.  College 
should  be  a  great  big  romance.  Where  did  all 
of  the  romance  go?   Where  is  it?" 

He  sighed. 

"Dad's  right,"  he  said.  "Don't  listen  to  me.  Go 
to  Yale  and  study  hard  during  the  week  and  go 
to  Smith  on  the  weekends  and  go  out  for  the 
right  clubs  and  buy  your  clothes  at  J.  Press  and 
try  to  make  Skull  and  Bones  and  marry  some 
girl  from  Darien  who  drives  a  station  wagon 
and  goes  to  Bermuda.  Don't  get  off  the  track.  If 
you  can  help  it.  I'm  in  no  position  to  tell  any- 
body else  what  to  do.  It's  just  that  I  thought  it 
was  going  to  be  like  Waldo,  and  it  wasn't,  and 
I  was  disappointed.  Just  try  not  to  build  things 
up  too  much." 

"I  won't,"  I  said. 

"Because  if  you  go  along  expecting  too  much 
and  being  disappointed  all  the  time,  next  you 
find  yourself  expecting  nothing  out  of  anything, 
just  to  avoid  being  disappointed,  and  when  that 
happens  you  might  as  well  be  dead.  Then  you 
...  oh  shut  me  up.  What  are  you  doing  to- 
night?" 

I  didn't  have  any  plans. 

"Listen,  Tony,  Mother  and  Dad  are  going  to 
be  out  anyway,  so  why  don't  you  come  to  a  party 
with  me.  Over  at  Lee's.  Come  on.  He's  collected 
quite  a  menagerie  of  friends,  and  it'll  be  different 
for  you.   Something  new." 

"Okay,"  I  said. 

Johnnie  got  up  and  straightened  the  covers 
on  my  bed. 

"Whatever  happened  to  that  girl  Lee  was 
always  with?"  I  asked. 

"Constance?    From  San  Francisco?" 

"She  was  beautiful,"  I  said.  I  remembered  that 
she  had  a  beautiful  face  with  bright  blue  eyes 
and  clean-looking,  soft  brown  hair  that  she  wore 
down  to  her  shoulders.  Lee  had  brought  her 
up  to  dinner  a  couple  of  times,  and  she  had 
charmed  me  off  the  wall.  She  had  a  way  of 
looking  right  into  your  eyes  when  she  talked  to 
you. 

"Well,  after  going  with  Lee  for  four  years,  she 
married  some  guy  from  Westport,"  Johnnie  said. 
He  threw  his  arms  up  in  the  air  and  said,  "See 
what  I  mean?" 

"Guess  so,"  I  answered,  and  Johnnie  went  into 
his  own  room. 

LE  E  was  Johnnie's  best  friend.  They  had 
been  in  the  same  class  at  Andover  and  Yale, 
and  Lee  used  to  come  home  with  him  for  week- 
ends and  Thanksgiving.  Lee  was  from  Okla- 
homa,  but   he   came   down   to   New   York   after 


Yale  and  got  a  job  with  an  advertising  agency. 
He  wanted  to  be  a  writer  and  he  had  terrific 
ideas,  but  I  never  saw  anything  he  wrote. 
Mother  and  Dad  liked  him  very  much.  They 
thought  he  was  a  good  influence  on  Johnnie.  I 
was  never  so  sure  about  that,  but  I  had  to  admit 
that  Lee  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  people 
I'd  ever  met. 

His  apartment  was  right  around  the  corner 
from  us,  between  Madison  and  Park.  He  had 
hundreds  of  books  in  cases  and  on  the  mantel 
and  stacked  on  tables,  two  portable  television 
sets,  a  portable  air-conditioner,  a  closet  filled 
with  liquor,  some  watercolors  of  New  York  and 
drawings  of  Yale  and  Andover  on  the  walls,  a 
silver  top  hat  he'd  worn  to  a  costume  ball  at  the 
Plaza,  a  wooden  shoe  from  Holland,  a  sun  lamp, 
a  bar  bell,  half  a  dozen  of  those  large  ashtrays 
from  the  Stork  Club,  a  cigarette  box  that  played 
"Boola  Boola,"  a  hi-fi  set  and  a  tremendous  col- 
lection of  records,  mostly  old  Bing  Crosby  and 
Gene  Austin  and  Helen  Kane  and  Paul  White- 
man  and  Helen  Morgan.  He  had  a  small  garden 
out  in  back  with  a  large  stone  turtle. 

I  liked  Lee  and  enjoyed  being  with  him,  but  I 
never  particularly  cared  for  the  people  he  had 
around  him.  He  never  seemed  to  be  alone,  and 
everybody  around  him  seemed  to  be  distin- 
guished in  some  odd  way.  There  was  a  girl 
who'd  been  on  a  safari  in  Africa  once,  a  guy 
who'd  been  stabbed  in  the  face  by  a  countess 
with  a  salad  fork,  a  man  who'd  been  hit  on  the 
head  by  a  telephone  switchboard  while  he  was 
walking  down  Wall  Street,  a  girl  from  Spain 
who  was  writing  a  novel  in  French,  a  male 
prostitute,  a  female  lawyer,  sons  and  daughters 
of  famous  actors  and  actresses  and  writers.  And 
then,  mixed  in  with  these  people,  he  had  the 
friends  he'd  known  in  schools.  I  liked  all  of  the 
last  group  very  much,  although  they  were  older 
than  I  was. 

I  was  glad  to  be  going  to  Lee's  party,  because 
no  one  would  be  at  home  and  I  didn't  feel  like 
knocking  around  the  apartment  by  myself,  but  I 
wasn't  too  excited.  I  honestly  don't  like  parties 
too  much.  I  love  to  go  to  dances,  but  I  don't 
enjoy  gatherings  where  people  just  stand  around 
and  talk  and  toss  down  the  liquor.  There  are 
two  good  reasons  for  my  feeling  this  way.  I'm 
very  shy  and  I  don't  like  to  drink.  It's  funny, 
but  most  people  get  the  impression  that  I'm  a 
deep  thinker  because  I  don't  talk  very  much. 
However,  it  doesn't  necessarily  follow  that  a  per- 
son is  really  intelligent  because  he  keeps  quiet 
most  of  the  time.  Sometimes  it's  because  he's  not 
very  bright  and  doesn't  have  anything  at  all  to 


34 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


say.  Willi  me,  I  like  to  think  it's  jusl  because 
I'm  sin. 

About  the  chinking,  I  do  drink  beer  some- 
times. You  can't  very  well  si t  at  Ryan's  or  Con- 
don's and  listen  to  jazz  with  a  prettv  girl  and 
drink  Cokes,  but  I  don't  chink  hard  liquor, 
be<  ause  1  gel  si(  k  and  vomit. 

So,  as  I  have  a  difficult  time  talking  to 
strangers,  we  usually  just  don't  connect,  and  as 
I  don't  enjoy  drinking  martinis,  I'm  not  too 
cra/y  about  cocktail  parties.  1  usually  end  up 
standing  by  myself  in  a  corner,  watching  the 
people,  eavesdropping  on  other  people's  conver- 
sations, and  reading  the  titles  ol  the  books  on  the 
shelves.  Another  thing  I  don't  like  about  most 
parties  in  New  York  is  that  everyone  tries  too 
hard  to  give  the  appearance  that  they  are  having 
a  wonderful  time.  Sometimes  I'm  sine  that  the 
people  really  are  having  a  good  time,  but  some- 
times I  wonder  il  most  of  them  leel  the  same 
way  I  do  but  won't  show  it. 

We  went  over  to  Lee's  about  nine-thirty.  The 
apartment  was  full  of  people,  and  they  were  all 
trying  to  outdo  each  other— laughing  very  loud, 
holding  their  drinks  high  in  the  air. 

"I  wonder  where  Lee  is,"  I  said  to  Johnnie 
after  we'd  walked  in. 

"Talk  to  people,"  he  yelled  into  my  ear. 

Then  he  walked  away  and  left  me.  1  didn't 
see  Lee.  The  party  looked  like  several  others 
I'd  seen  around  New  York.  It  wasn't  a  social 
party  or  a  Village  party;  it  was  a  mixed-up  party. 
The  people  were  all  different  ages,  and  i  don't 
think  many  of  them  had  too  much  in  common. 
I  went  into  the  kitchen  and  poured  myself  a  glass 
of  ginger  ale  and  prepared  to  go  in  and  read  the 
book  titles.  As  I  was  trying  to  edge  my  wa\  away 
from  the  sink,  someone  shoved  me.  1  looked 
around  and  saw  a  young  man  with  a  pained 
expression  on  his  face  and  one  arm  up  in  the  air. 

"Is  there  any  butter  over  here?"  he  demanded. 

"Stick  it  under  the  faucet,  Bobby,"  said  a 
small  girl  who  was  hanging  onto  his  other  arm. 
"Don't  make  a  fuss." 

"A  fuss!"  Bobby  exclaimed,  turning  on  the 
faucet  full  force  and  putting  his  hand  under  it. 
"Who  was  that  guy?   I'll  murder  him." 

"You'll  do  nothing,"  the  girl  said,  looking  into 
.her  drink  as  if  she  had  dropped  something  into 
the  glass  and  was  trying  to  find  it.  "You  brushed 
up  against  the  man's  cigarette.  He  didn't  mean 
to  burn  your  hand." 

"Shut  up,"  Bobby  said,  crossly. 

"Wear  gloves,"  the  girl  said,  giggling. 

"What  am  I  going  to  do?  And  I'm  supposed  to 
make  that  film  tomorrow." 


"Are  you  an  ac  tor?"  I  asked. 

He  looked  at  me  and  said  smoothly,  "Yes,  I 
am." 

"Hah!"  the  girl  snorted. 

"Don't  pay  am  attention  to  her,"  lie  told  me. 
"She's  an  idiot.  I  am  an  actor.  Are  you  in  the 
theater?" 

"Oh  no,"  I  said.  "But  I'm  always  interested  in 
meeting  people  on  the  stage.  Do  you  know 
Marilyn  Monroe  by  any  chance?" 

"Not  really,"  he  said.  I  couldn't  figure  out 
what  that  meant.  "I'm  a  dramatic  actor,  all 
right,  but  recently  I've  been  doing  these  TV 
commercials.  It's  just  a  temporary  thing.  I've 
been  doing  things  with  my  hands." 

I  gave  him  a  blank  look. 

"You  know."  he  continued,  "picking  up  cans 
of  beer,  holding  cigarettes,  stuff  like  that.  Of 
course,  it's  not  really  acting,  but  what  are  you 
gonna  do?" 

"Stop  ignoring  me!"  the  girl  said  loudly. 
"There  are  two  kinds  of  people  in  this  world— 
those  who  ignore  and  those  who  are  ignored. 
And  I'm  tired  of  being  ignored." 

"I'm  not  ignoring  you,  doll,"  Bobby  said, 
smiling  sweetly  at  her.   "I'm  rejecting  you." 

IW  A  L  K  E  I)  into  the  living-room,  but  didn't 
see  Lee,  so  I  started  circling  the  room.  No  one 
paid  any  attention  to  me.  I  must  have  walked 
around  the  room  about  seven  times.  So  I  gave 
up  and  went  over  to  the  bookcases.  I'd  finished  a 
couple  ol  shelves  when  a  middle-aged  woman 
with  platinum  hair  and  gum  in  her  mouth  came 
over  and  told  me  I  looked  familiar. 

"Don't  I  know  you?  I  know  I  know  you.  Ever 
go  to  a  night  spot  called  the  Play  Pen?" 

I  told  her  that  I  was  afraid  not.  Then  she 
asked  me  if  she  could  fix  me  a  drink,  and  1  told 
her  that  I  didn't  drink. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  looking  at  me  sympathetically 
and  nodding,  as  if  I  had  just  made  some  deep 
confession  and  she  was  assuring  me  that  she 
understood.    "Alcoholic." 

This  struck  me  as  being  pretty  funny,  so  I 
nodded. 

"Well,  anyway,"  she  said,  patting  her  hair,  "I 
know  I've  met  you  somewhere  else."  She  spat 
her  gum  into  a  wastebasket  and  then  added, 
"Socially." 

I  nodded  and  she  turned  around  and  started 
talking  to  a  man  with  a  cigarette  holder. 

"It's  strontium  in  the  air,  darling!  That's  why 
everyone  is  acting  so  wild!"  I  heard  a  woman 
with  long  earrings  shout  at  a  small  group  of 
people. 


WALDO 


35 


A  Lester  Lanin  record  was  playing  on  the  hi-fi 
and  several  people  were  trying  to  find  room  to 
dance.  I  looked  all  around,  trying  to  find  Lee, 
but  I  didn't  see  him. 

Johnnie  was  standing  by  the  door  with  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  girls  I'd  ever  seen.  I 
walked  over  to  them  and  saw  that  he  was  trying 
to  make  her  take  her  coat  off. 

"Come°  on,  Hope,  take  your  coat  off  and  stay 
a  while,"  he  was  saying. 

"But  I  can't,  Johnnie,  I  told  you  I  can't.  I 
have  to  be  someplace  else,  and  I  just  stopped  by 
for  a  couple  of  minutes,"  the  girl  said,  trying  to 
be  nice  about  the  whole  thing. 

"Tony,"  Johnnie  said  to  me,  "this  is  Hope 
Paradise.   Isn't  that  a  name  for  you?" 

"It  happens  to  be  my  real  name,"  the  girl  said. 
"Please  let  go  of  my  .  .  ." 

"Aww,  just  stay  for  a  little  while.  Just  a  little 
longer,"  Johnnie  asked.   "Please." 

"I'd  like  to,  but  I  can't,  Johnnie,  so  please 
let  go  of  .  .  ." 

Johnnie  let  go  of  her  coat  and  she  went  out  the 
door,  closing  it  behind  her. 

"Who  was  that?"  I  asked. 

"Girl  I  know.   A  model." 

"Oh,"  I  said.  "Well,  I  have  to  go  to  the  bath- 
room." 

"Great  conversationalist,"  my  brother  said, 
clapping  me  on  the  back  and  walking  away  from 
me. 

A  girl  in  a  blue  dress  was  sitting  on  the  edge 
of  the  bathtub,  crying.  I  stood  there  for  a 
moment,  not  knowing  what  to  do,  then  I  went 
over  to  her. 

"Hey,"  I  said  quietly.    "What's  the  matter?" 

"Nobody  loves  me,"  the  girl  sobbed.  "Nobody 
loves  me." 

"Oh,"  I  said,  trying  to  comfort  her,  "sure 
they  do." 

"No,"  she  cried.  "Nobody  loves  me." 

"Well,"  I  said  brightly,  "nobody  loves  me  and 
I'm  not  crying!" 

This  failed  to  cheer  her  up. 

"Ooooooh,"  she  cried.  "I'm  so  unhappy.  No- 
body loves  me  at  all." 

She  went  on  crying. 

"Do  you  love  somebody?"  I  asked. 

"No,"  she  said,  wiping  her  eyes.   "I  can't." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  nobody  loves  me,"  she  said  and 
started  to  cry  again. 

"I'll  get  you  a  drink  and  you'll  feel  better," 
I  said.    "Be  right  back." 

I  had  to  wait  in  line  to  get  at  the  liquor. 
Finally  I  moved  in  close  enough  to  pour  out  a 


glass  of  Scotch  for  the  girl.  When  I  went  back 
into  the  bathroom,  she  was  gone. 

I  came  back  out  into  the  living-room  and 
looked  around  for  her.  Then  I  saw  Jier— dancing 
and  laughing  merrily  with  some  guy.  Annoyed, 
I  put  the  glass  down. 

Johnnie  waved  at  me  from  the  other  side  of 
the  room.  I  went  over  and  asked  him  if  he  was 
having  fun. 

"Tony,"  he  said,  throwing  his  arm  around  a 
guy  with  sad  brown  eyes,  "tell  this  jerk  not  to 
go  into  a  monastery." 

"Don't  go  into  a  monastery,"  I  said. 

"See,  Nicco?"  Johnnie  said,  leaning  against  a 
bookcase. 

"But  I  want  to  get  away  from  everything," 
Nicco  said,  looking  at  me  with  those  unhappy 
eyes.   "I  don't  like  anything  very  much." 

"Don't  you  have  to  have  some  kind  of  religious 
calling  to  become  a  monk?"  I  asked. 

"I  don't  know,"  Nicco  said,  shrugging  his 
shoulders.  "I  don't  know  anything  about  it.  I 
don't  even  know  where  any  monasteries  are. 
Even  if  I  decided  to  go,  I  wouldn't  know  where 
to  go." 

He  smiled  sadly,  and  Johnnie  pushed  him  into 
a  chair. 


36 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


"Wait  here  a  minute,"  he  said. 

Johnnie  pulled  a  book  from  the  case  and  put 
it  in  Nicco's  lap. 

"You  just  look  at  that  book,"  Johnnie  said 
emphatically.  "Study  it.  Marvel  at  its  beauty. 
Contemplate  it.  And  you'll  forget  this  monastery 
bit." 

Nicco  opened  the  book.  It  was  a  collection  of 
art  photographs  of  naked  women— running  along 
the  beach,  lying  on  the  dunes,  hanging  out  of 
sling  chairs. 

I  was  looking  over  Nicco's  shoulder  as  he 
flipped  the  pages. 

"Seen  Lee  yet?"  Johnnie  asked  me. 

"Not  yet,"  I  said,  my  eyes  fastened  on  a  woman 
doing  things  with  a  giant  beach  balloon. 

"Where  are  your  manners?"  he  asked,  pre- 
tending to  be  shocked. 

"I  couldn't  find  him,"  I  said,  still  looking 
down. 

"He's  in  the  bedroom,"  Johnnie  said.  "Eating 
caviar  with  Constance." 

"Doing  what?"  I  asked,  looking  up. 

"She's  here  with  her  husband,"  Johnnie  said. 
"Go  on  in  and  pay  your  respects." 

"I  will,"  I  said,  taking  a  last  look  at  the  book. 

WHEN  I  walked  into  the  bedroom,  I 
found  Lee  and  Constance  sitting  on  a 
huge  double  bed,  dipping  melba  rounds  into  a 
jar  of  caviar.  They  seemed  to  be  having  a  very 
serious  conversation.  Constance  looked  so  pretty 
in  a  white  dress,  and  Lee  looked  great.  He  was 
wearing  a  blue  blazer  and  a  striped  tie. 

"Everyone  spends  too  much  time  trying  to  be 
a  psychiatrist,"  Lee  was  saying.  "Everybody  is 
analyzing  everybody  else  and  they're  amateurs 
and  not  fit  for  the  job.  People  are  so  busy 
analyzing  each  other  that  no  one  seems  to  be 
just  friendly  any  more." 

Constance  nodded.  "You  should  get  married, 
Lee,"  she  said. 

"Why?"  Lee  asked. 

I  sat  down  on  the  bed  with  them,  and  we  all 
said  hello,  and  they  resumed  their  conversation. 

"Darling,"  she  said  to  Lee.  "You  don't  know. 
You  just  don't  know." 

"Well,  tell  me,"  he  said.  "I'm  ready  to  be 
convinced.  What  is  so  wonderful  about  being 
married?" 

"It's,  well,  it's  going  to  sound  corny,  but  it's  so 
true,"  she  said,  passing  her  hand  through  her 
long  brown  hair.  "It's  being  together.  Blanton 
and  I  are  so  happy  because  we  share  things.  We 
have  breakfast  together  and  talk  about  every- 
thing and  read  the  same  books  and  see  the  same 


television  shows.  And  we  go  shopping  together 
and  fix  dinner  and  do  the  dishes  and  then  go  to 
bed.  Sometimes  we  stay  up  until  five  in  the 
morning,  just  lying  there  in  bed,  talking  about 
things  and  smoking.  It's  just  being  together. 
Everywhere." 

"So  that's  what  being  married  is,"  Lee  said, 
trying  to  balance  the  jar  of  caviar  on  his  head. 

"Yes,"  Constance  said. 

"That's  fine,"  Lee  said,  putting  the  jar  back 
on  the  bed.    "But  Constance." 

"What?" 

"All  of  those  things  you  were  just  talking 
about,"  he  said.  "We  did  exactly  all  of  those 
same  things  for  several  months.  And  we  weren't 
married.  So  what's  so  wonderfully  different 
about  being  married?" 

Constance  opened  her  mouth,  closed  it,  looked 
at  Lee  for  a  moment,  brushed  the  crumbs  off 
her  skirt  and  stood  up. 

"What  a  disgustingly  common  thing  to  say," 
she  said. 

She  walked  out  of  the  room  and  Lee  offered 
me  some  caviar. 

"My  'pologies,"  Lee  said.  "Please  excuse  my 
vulgarity.  But  I'm  right.  That's  the  saving 
factor.   How've  you  been,  Tony,  old  scout?" 

He  was  pretty  tight.  We  got  up  and  walked 
out  into  the  garden,  and  I  told  him  that  I  was 
going  up  to  New  Haven  the  next  afternoon. 

"Dear  old  Yale,"  he  said.  "Mother  of  Men.  A 
gorgeous  playground." 

"Johnnie  tried  to  give  me  some  advice  this 
afternoon,  but  it  was  pretty  confusing,"  I  told 
him.  We  sat  down.  "And  Dad  just  told  me  all 
those  old  stories  about  Waldo." 

"A  mistake  on  both  their  parts,"  Lee  said. 

"They  just  wanted  to  help  me,"  I  said. 

"You're  going  to  Yale,  so  you  just  go  to  Yale 
and  you  do  what  you  want  to  do  and  make  your 
own  mistakes  if  you  have  to.  That's  all.  No 
advice.  But  Waldo.  Ah,  those  must  have  been 
the  days." 

"Dad  says  that  Waldo  couldn't  exist  at  Yale 
today,"  I  said. 

"He's  right,"  Lee  replied,  offering  me  a 
cigarette.  "You  won't  find  a  Waldo  at  Yale  or 
any  other  place,  for  that  matter.  Not  now.  We're 
just  not  set  up  to  produce  a  Waldo.  I  think  the 
world  is  in  a  state  of  slow  nervous  breakdown. 
Look  around.  Look  in  the  other  room.  What  do 
you  see?  Frustration  and  confusion.  A  group  of 
lonely,  scared,  fake  children.  People  who  have 
selected  marriage  or  alcohol  or  drugs  or  religion 
or  sex  or  suicide  or  some  form  of  destruction  or 
self-destruction  just  as  they  would  have  chosen 


WALDO 


37 


a  course  in  college,  thinking  it  would  give  them 
something.  And  what's  the  result?  Emptiness 
and  fear.  I  mean,  besides  a  lot  of  damned  non- 
sense, the  result  is  confusion  and  frustration, 
frustration  and  confusion." 

I  was  silent  for  a  minute,  and  then  I  said, 
"Sounds  pretty  depressing." 

"Nah,"  Lee  said,  putting  his  hand  on  my  knee 
for  a  moment.  "Forget  it.  Maybe  it'll  pass.  You 
don't  have  to  live  in  it  for  four  more  glorious 
years.  You've  got  those  Bright  College  Years  in 
front  of  you,  and  things  may  have  changed  by 
then.  You'll  have  a  great  time  up  at  New 
Haven." 

"I  hope  so,"  I  said,  dismally. 

"I'll  tell  you  something,  Tony,"  Lee  said.  "I'll 
make  a  confession.   Do  you  know  what  I  am?" 

I  shook  my  head. 

"An  imitation  Waldo,"  he  said.  "A  fake.  I'm 
just  as  bad  as  those  other  people  inside.  Maybe 
worse.  It's  a  hard  thing  for  me  to  admit,  but  I 
tried  to  pass  myself  oft  as  a  Waldo.  Doing  crazy 
things.  Trying  to  be  exciting  and  casual  and 
all  of  the  things  Waldo  was  supposed  to  be.  Col- 
lecting props  for  my  rooms  at  school,  searching 
out  unusual  people.  1  think  1  fooled  some  peo- 
ple. I  know  I  fooled  myself  for  a  long  time.  But 
it  wasn't  real.   Not  for  a  minute." 

I  sat  and  tried  to  see  his  face  in  the  darkness. 

"Sometimes,"  he  said,  "I  wonder  if  the  real 
Waldo  wasn't  a  lake  too." 

"He  couldn't  have  been,"  I  said. 

He  agreed,  and  we  went  back  into  the  party. 

Johnnie  was  using  the  telephone,  trying  to  con- 
vince some  girl  to  come  over  and  join  him  at  the 
party.  I  told  him  that  I  was  leaving  and  he  just 
nodded  and  went  on  talking  into  the  phone.  I 
said  good  night  to  Lee  and  he  wished  me  luck. 
Then  I  walked  on  home.  It  took  me  about  two 
hours  to  fall  asleep. 

WHEN  I  woke  up  late  the  ncxi  morning, 
the  sky  was  gray  outside  the  windows. 
Johnnie  came  in  and  put  his  cashmere  sweaters 
into  one  of  my  suitcases,  Mother  gave  me  an 
extra  fifty  dollars  and  alter  lunch  I  went  down 
to  Grand  Central. 

The  train  pulled  into  New  Haven  about  lour, 
and  I  took  a  cab  up  to  the  Old  Campus  where 
all  of  the  freshmen  live.  It  was  a  sad  afternoon, 
dark  and  (old  and  raining,  and  everything  I 
saw  looked  depressing  and  ugly— the  people  on 
the  street,  some  old  drunken  bums,  a  woman 
slapping  her  child,  the  gray  buildings,  every- 
thing.  I  pi<  I'd  up  my  room  key  and  went  over 
to  Vanderbilt   '  fall. 


Bill,  my  roommate  from  Andover,  had  not 
arrived.  Neither  had  the  two  new  guys  who  had 
been  put  in  with  us  to  share  the  two  bedrooms 
and  living-room.  All  three  of  the  rooms  looked 
pretty  bare.  It  was  cold,  and  I  felt  sort  of  sick. 
I  had  a  very  bad  headache,  and  1  was  tired.  So 
I  went  into  one  of  the  bedrooms,  lay  down  on 
one  of  the  beds,  spread  my  coat  over  me  and 
closed  my  eyes. 

I  don't  know  how  long  I  slept,  but  it  was  dark 
when  I  woke  up.  1  heard  whistling.  Someone 
was  whistling  "Among  My  Souvenirs."  I  got  up 
and  went  into  the  living-room,  but  no  one  was 
in  there. 

I  saw  a  large  steamer  trunk  with  CUnard 
stickers  on  it,  half-a-dozen  bottles  of  champagne, 
and,  on  the  mantel,  a  framed  photograph  of  a 
young  man  standing  on  a  beach  with  his  arm 
around  the  waist  of  a  girl  who  looked  exactly  like 
Marilyn  Monroe.  The  whistling  stopped,  and  I 
turned  and  saw  one  of  my  new  roommates  in  the 
doorway  of  the  other  bedroom. 

He  was  tall  and  had  close-cut  yellow  hair  and 
green  eyes,  and  he  was  holding  a  bowl  of  gold- 
fish. 

"Hello,"  he  said,  smiling.  "I'm  Waldo." 


B 


nice 


Bli 


ven 


SAN  FRANCISCO 


New  Serpents  in  Eden 


The  pleasantest  city  in  America  is  baffled 

by  an  invasion  which  threatens  to  make  it 

as  uncomfortable  as  New  York  or  Detroit. 


A  FEW  years  ago  the  editor  of  a  Parisian 
magazine  had  a  bright  idea.  He  hired  a 
nice  young  couple  to  travel  all  over  the  world 
and  write  a  series  of  articles  about  the  ten  most 
attractive  cities.  The  series  was  never  completed; 
when  the  touring  journalists  got  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, they  threw  up  the  job,  applied  for  Amer- 
ican citizenship,  and  settled  down  happily  to 
spend  the  rest  of  their  lives  by  the  Golden  Gate. 
No  San  Franciscan  was  in  the  least  surprised 
at  this  development.  One  and  all,  they  take  it 
for  granted  that  they  are  living  in  the  most 
glamorous  place  on  the  face  of  the  earth  and 
accept  it  as  only  their  due  when,  for  example,  a 
public-opinion  poll  reports  that  80  per  cent  of 
all  Americans  had  rather  move  to  the  city  by  the 
Golden  Gate  than  to  any  other.  Local  residents 
are  so  accustomed  to  having  encomiums  heaped 
upon  their  community  that  any  visitor  important 
enough  to  get  into  the  daily  papers  had  better 
say  something  nice  about  the  town,  or  else.  With 
the  famous  California  tradition  of  hospitality, 
they  probably  would  not  string  him  up  to  the 
nearest  lamp-post,  though  they  might  mention, 
in  a  friendly,  knife-edged  way,  that  the  Vigilantes 
a  hundred  years  ago  used  this  method  of  dispos- 
ing of  a  good  many  people  who  just  obviously 
didn't  belong  in  such  a  blessed  area;  but  he  would 
certainly  be  made  to  feel  so  unwelcome  that  after 
a  last  twilight  look  from  the  Top  o'  the  Mark, 
he  would  pack  his  bags  and  sneak  off  to  some 
city  with  a  lower  level  of  civic  loyalty— Los 
Angeles,  for  instance,  where  every  second  person 


you  meet  will  agree  warmly  about  the  smog  and 
the  other  shortcomings  of  the  town. 

It  is  sad  to  report,  then,  that  San  Francisco, 
this  Paradise  by  the  Pacific,  is  in  serious  trouble; 
but  the  journalist's  duty  to  truth  comes  ahead  of 
everything  else. 

THE    SECRET    OF    THE    CHARM 

BEFORE  we  get  to  that  problem,  we  should 
pause  to  admit  that  San  Francisco  does  have 
unique  qualities.  Many  people  have  said  so,  and 
a  lot  of  them  were  writers,  who  have  the  perhaps 
unfair  advantage  over  other  people  of  having 
their  remarks  printed  and  preserved.  I  shall  sum- 
mon only  one  contemporary  witness— Kenneth 
Rexroth,  the  poet,  who  has  seen  a  lot  of  places 
and  says  firmly  that  this  is  "one  of  the  easiest 
cities  in  the  world  to  live  in.  It  is  the  easiest  in 
America.  ...  If  I  couldn't  live  here  I  would 
leave  the  United  States  for  someplace  like  Aix  en 
Provence."  Turning  himself,  by  poetic  license, 
into  a  multitude  he  adds,  a  little  cryptically, 
"Poets  come  to  San  Francisco  for  the  same  reason 
so  many  Hungarians  have  been  going  to  Austria 
recently." 

If  a  city  is  unique,  there  must  be  a  reason,  and 
in  the  case  under  discussion  one  can  think  off- 
hand of  several. 

Among  them  is  certainly  the  novel  climate. 
The  Chamber  of  Commerce  firmly  states  that 
San  Francisco  has  many  fair  days,  and  more 
sunshine  than  seven  out  of  ten  leading  American 
cities;  but  if  "fair  day"  means  what  I  think, 
the  C.  of  C.  has  never  stuck  its  head  out  the 
window.  The  city  is  foggy,  windy,  and  cool  from 
Labor  Day  until  Decoration  Day;  during  the 
three  summer  months,  it  is  foggy,  windy,  and  cold. 
Late  every  afternoon,  practically  the  year  round, 
a   stiff  sea    breeze    blows    in    from    the    Pacific, 


SAN     FRANCISCO:     NEW     SERPENTS     IN     EDEN 


39 


carrying  with  it  on  many  days  fog  heavy  enough 
to  require  windshield  wipers  and  headlights. 
The  San  Franciscans  do  not  turn  blue  with  the 
cold  as  the  Londoners  do  (the  idea  that  the 
ancient  Britons  painted  themselves  that  color 
is  obviously  a  misunderstanding);  the  men  are 
ruddy,  and  the  girls  have  glowing  pink  com- 
plexions, bitterly  envied  by  the  baked-out  women 
of  the  rest  of  California.  They  wear  suits,  furs, 
gloves,  hats,  and  veils  all  the  year,  merely  chang- 
ing to  slightly  heavier  fabrics  in  summer. 

A  sad  but  familiar  sight  in  San  Francisco  is 
a  summer  tourist  from  the  East  shivering 
miserably  in  Union  Square  on  an  August  day. 
He  is  wearing  an  ice-cream  suit;  he  may  even 
have  on  a  straw  hat— two  items  totally  omitted 
from  the  wardrobe  of  the  well-dressed  San  Fran- 
ciscan. He  is  so  wretched  that  it  is  standard 
procedure  for  some  well-clothed  native  to  hustle 
him  into  the  nearest  bar  for  first  aid. 

Most  of  California  is  very  dry,  very  hot  in 
summer,  and  stimulating  to  feverish  if  meaning- 
less activity  such  as  laying  out  subdivisions.  San 
Francisco's  coolness  is  damp  and  relaxing.  The 
city  does  an  enormous  amount  of  business— in 
banking,  for  instance,  it  leads  all  Pacific  coast 
rivals— but  it  does  it  in  a  casual  manner.  Its  busy 
people  are  never  too  busy  to  knock  off  for  a  spot 
of  golf,  to  sail  the  (often  stormy)  waters  of  the 
Bay,  or  to  show  an  Eastern  visitor  the  town. 

Another  element  in  the  city's  charm  is  its 
topography.  Most  American  cities  tend  to  be 
flat,  whereas  San  Francisco  tends  to  be  perpen- 
dicular. The  exact  number  of  the  city's  hills  is 
in  dispute,  but  there  are  three  important  ones 
in  a  row  along  the  edge  of  the  Bay  toward  the 
Golden  Gate— Telegraph,  Nob,  and  Russian.  All 
of  them  are  so  steep  that  sensible  people  would 
ascend  them  only  by  means  of  firemen's  ladders, 
but  the  San  Franciscans  casually  whip  up  and 
down  these  dreadful  heights  in  automobiles. 
Each  hill  is  covered  with  a  gridiron  of  streets; 
not  only  must  you  drive  up  a  practically  inacces- 
sible cliff,  but  at  every  intersection  you  must 
stop  for  cross  traffic  and  hang  there  suspended 
over  infinity  before  you  start  up  again. 

San  Francisco  has  heard  of  traffic  lights,  but 
doesn't  believe  in  them.  There  are  a  few;  there 
are  also  a  few  stop  signs,  and  some  exemplars  of 
a  wonderful  birdcage  on  a  pole,  in  which  a  slid- 
ing panel  comes  into  view  from  time  to  time 
with  "Stop"  or  "Go"  painted  on  it.  But  the  most 
typical  situation  is  one  where  the  intersection  is 
boycotted  by  the  police,  and  cars  coming  from 
four  or  more  directions  bull  their  way  out  until 
the  man  with   the  more  aggressive  personality 


wins.  This  is  wonderful  exercise  for  the  adrenal 
glands. 

In  addition  to  climate  and  topography,  there 
are  the  standard  tourist  attractions,  and  if  you 
think  I'm  going  to  omit  mention  of  them,  you 
don't  understand  the  long  arm  of  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce.  There  are  the  antique  cable  cars, 
clanging  their  way  up  and  down  those  terrifying 
hills,  with  the  passengers  enthusiastically  tum- 
bling off  to  help  push  the  car  around  on  the 
turntable  at  the  end  of  the  line.  There  is  the 
Cliff  House,  looking  out  at  the  sea  lions  romping 
on  the  Seal  Rocks  and  beyond  them  to  six  thou- 
sand miles  of  blue  water.  There  are  the  tremen- 
dous panoramas  of  ocean,  bay,  and  mountains  to 
be  seen  in  all  directions,  so  thrilling  that  San 
Franciscans  steadfastly  refuse  to  buy  paintings 
to  hang  on  their  walls,  feeling  that  no  artist  can 
compete  with  the  view.  There  are  the  famous 
restaurants;  only  New  York  and  possibly  New 
Orleans  can  vie  with  them  in  quality,  and  prob- 
ably no  other  city  in  the  Western  hemisphere 
has  as  many  in  proportion  to  population. 

EGGHEAD     FORTY-EIGHTERS 

EVERYONE  has  heard  of  the  roaring 
Forty-Niners  who  turned  a  somnolent  Span- 
ish village  into  a  hustling  American  city,  as  a 
casual  incident  of  their  rush  to  the  gold  mines. 
What  is  less  well-known  is  that  the  new  town 
had  another  set  of  progenitors,  the  Forty- 
Eighters.  In  that  year  Europe  boiled  with 
political  unrest,  and  many  of  her  finest  liberal 
spirits  had  to  flee,  or  face  the  prospect  of  long- 
prison  sentences  for  subversive  activity.  A  lot  of 
them  came  to  the  New  World,  and  a  large  pro- 
portion got  as  far  from  Europe  as  they  could— 
without  encroaching  on  the  Orient— by  coming 
all  the  way  around  the  Horn.  Their  presence 
helps  to  explain  why,  within  only  a  few  years 
after  James  Marshall  had  stumbled  over  gold  at 
Sutter's  Mill,  San  Francisco  provided  audiences 
for  the  finest  music,  drama,  and  other  forms  of 
artistic  expression  that  London  or  New  York 
had  to  offer. 

The  first  circulating  libraries  in  California 
specialized  in  books  in  German,  French,  and 
Italian;  and  the  readers  of  those  books  set  cul- 
tural standards  that  are  still  respected  today. 
San  Francisco  is  one  of  the  very  few  American 
cities  with  its  own  annual  season  of  locally-pro- 
duced and  brilliantly-performed  opera,  and  its 
own  symphony  orchestra,  whose  successive  leaders 
have  included  some  of  the  most  famous  musical 
names  of  two  generations.    Its  art  museums  are 


40 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


of  high  quality;  it  is  a  good  theater  town  for 
traveling  companies.  It  has  half-a-dozen  (nsi- 
i.i  11  k  bookstores,  those  touchstones  of  the  cul- 
ture  of  cities,  .mil  one  ol  the  niosi  successful  of 
the  non-commercial  TV  stations  -KQED— which 
originates  many  excellent  programs,  especially 
in  science,  that  are  subsequently  displayed  on 
the  other  noncommercial  stations  of  the  No- 
Money  Netwoi  L 

GREENWICH    VILLAGE    OUT    WEST 

SAN  Francisco  lias  its  own  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage, though  like  the  one  ill  New  York,  it  is 
rapidly  being  destroyed  as  a  physical  entity  by 
new  high-rent  living  quarters  which  the  creative 
woi  ker  can  rarely  afford.  The  Bohemians  decades 
ago  clustered  on  Telegraph  Hill,  sharing  it  with 
the  Italians  whose  chief  source  ol  livelihood  was 
and  is  lisliing. 

A  good  deal  has  been  written  lately  about  an 
upsurge  in  artistic  expression  by  young  and 
vigorous  talent  in  San  Francisco;  it  is  a  mark  of 
the  Vge  ol  Publicity  that  this  movement  should 
have  been  widely  heralded  almost  before  it  had 
begun  and  in  terms  thai  seem  somewhat  excessive 
in  view  of  the  accomplishment.  At  the  moment, 
the  best  known  individual  is  a  promising  thirty- 
li\e\e.n  old  novelist,  rack  Kerouac,  whose  second 

published  novel  is  On  the  Road.  Mr.  Kerouac 
claims  to  speak  lor  the  "beat"  generation. 
This  does  not  mean,  as  some  people  have 
assumed,  beaten  down,  or  even  beaten  up;  it  is 
what  old-fashioned  people  like  me  would  refer 
to  as  real  cool;  not  a  square  in  a  carload.  The 
philosophy  is  that  of  young  hedonists  who  don't 
really  care  whether  something  is  good  oi   evil,  as 

long  as  it  is  enjoyable.  In  short,  Existentialism 
with  a  crew  cut.  Since  the  famous  Lost  Genera- 
tion of  the  1920s  consisted  ol  about  ten  people, 
it  is  possible  that  Mr.  Kerouac 's  group,  even 
allowing  lor  inflation,  may  number  not  more 
than  about  twenty. 

There  is  also  Mr.  Rexroth,  who  was  the  first 
of  several  local  bards  to  begin  reciting  poetry  in 
night  clubs  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  jazz 
orchestra.  (Two  others  are  Kenneth  Pan  hen  and 
Lawrence  Ferlinghetti.)  The  night  club  patrons 
appear  intrigued  by  this. 

\i  San  Francisco  State  College  there  is  a  Poetry 
Center,  subsidized,  oddly  enough,  by  the  Rocke- 
feller Foundation,  at  which  many  poets,  some  of 

them    deservedly    famous,    have    appealed    and 

given  readings  from  their  own  works. 

Mine  is  i  group  ol  younger  poets,  painters, 
and  musicians,  singularly  like  the  similar  group 


that  is  always  functioning  in  most  American 
cities;  a  lot  ol  the  poets  belong  to  the  familiar 
rats-among-the-garbage  school,  lew  of  them  are 
quite  good  enough  to  break  through  on  the 
national  scene,  but  all  ol  them  have  a  lot  of  fun 
while  being  lionized  mostly  by  each  other— at 
home.  Manv  ol  these  young  artists  adhere  to  the 
cult  of  unintelligibility,  which  produces  poetry 
with  little  meaning  s.ive  to  the  poet,  non-repre- 
sentational painting,  and  cacophonous  music. 
S.i n  Francisco  loves  its  Bright  Young  People,  and 
will  do  anything  lor  them— except,  of  course,  to 
read  their  writing,  look  at  their  pictures,  or 
listen  to  I  heir  music .  As  is  the  case  with  most  of 
the  young  revoltes  the  world  over,  a  goodly  pro- 
portion  ol  them  are  siill  being  supported  by 
Papa,  who  is,  in  Shaw's  famous  saving,  bourgeois 
to  his  boots. 

An  exception  should  be  noted  for  the  Little 
Theaters.  Commercial  drama  is  sparse  in  San 
Francisco,  with  only  three  houses  available  for 
the  traveling  companies  of  last  season's  Broadway 
successes,  and  the  gap  is  Idled  by  a  remarkable 
proliferation  ol  acting  groups,  many  of  them  so 
good  and  so  sue  c  esslul  that  they  are  at  least  quasi- 
professional.  II  iluv  could  afford  it,  the  Little 
'1  heaters  would  doubtless  produce  modern  plays 
that  only  a  little  handful  of  c  ultists  would  attend; 
but  to  run  a  theater  costs  money,  and  they  have 
to  compromise  with  the  public  taste.  They  do 
this  with  remarkable  success;  ihev  produce  a 
reasonable  proportion  of  modern  experimental 
wot  ks  like  "Waiting  for  Godot,"  interlarded  with 
the  classics,  ranging  all  the  way  lioin  the  ancient 
Greeks  to  Sheridan  and  Moliere.  plus  a  reason- 
able proportion  of  the  Broadway  smash  hits  of  a 
lew  years  ago.  I  he  result  is  that  there  are  always 
ai  least  loui  or  live  plays  running  which  any  in- 
telligent person  can  enjoy  seeing.  Directing, 
acting,  stage  design,  and  lighting  are  good,  and 
many  of  these  plays  give  three  or  lour  per- 
formances a  week  lor  months  on  end. 

I  should  add  (hat  plenty  of  competent,  adult 
practitioners  ol  all  the  arts  live  and  work  in  San 
Francisco  and  environs;  but,  as  is  true  every- 
where, they  spend  their  time  practicing  their 
professions,  and  cause  little  more  public  stir  than 
tin  sober  bankers  or  housewives  they  so  often 
resemble. 

LIVING    TOGETHER 

THE  city  has  large  colonies  with  varying 
racial  and  cultural  backgrounds  and  ad- 
justs to  them  remarkably  well,  on  the  whole. 
Chinatown  still  exists,  but  nearly  all  its  iuhabi- 


SAN     FRANCISCO:     NEW     SERPENTS     IN     EDEN 


41 


tants  today  are  American-born,  speak  unaccented 
current  slang  fluently,  and  act  and  think  like  any 
native  white  Protestant  in  Emporia,  Kansas.  An 
era  came  to  an  end  when  dial  telephones  sup- 
planted the  famous  old  Chinese  exchange  with 
its  brilliant  corps  of  bilingual  girl  operators.  The 
Chinatown  of  the  sight-seeing  buses  is  almost 
entirely  a  tourist  trap. 

During  the  second  world  war,  there  was  a 
heavy  influx  of  Negroes  who  came  to  work  in 
shipyards  and  other  war  plants  around  the  shores 
of  San  Francisco  Bay.  At  that  time  there  was 
some  racial  tension,  part  of  which  was  probably 
sparked  by  enemy  agents.  Today  the  Negro  com- 
munity of  43,000  gives  every  appearance  of  get- 
ting on  well  with  its  white  neighbors. 

THE    SEAMIER     SIDE 

THERE  are  a  few  puzzling,  discordant 
notes  in  the  happy  symphony  of  San  Fran- 
cisco life.  One  of  these  is  the  astonishingly  high 
rate  of  alcoholism,  much  the  highest  in  the 
nation.  San  Franciscans  average  4.57  gallons  of 
distilled  spirits  every  year,  several  times  the  na- 
tional level,  and  the  death  rate  from  cirrhosis  of 
the  liver  is  3.5  times  higher.  San  Francisco's  Skid 
Row  is  one  of  the  worst  and  most  heavily  popu- 
lated to  be  found  anywhere.  Problem  drinkers 
are  estimated  to  number  as  high  as  one  in  every 
six  adults,  while  the  national  average  is  less  than 
one  in  sixteen. 

There  are  no  accurate  statistics  on  the  use  of 
narcotics,  since  that  trade  is  underground,  but 
there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  high. 
The  city  is  a  heavy  port  of  entry  for  dope  smug- 
glers, in  spite  of  earnest  efforts  by  federal,  state, 
and  local  authorities.  At  a  recent  public  hearing 
on  this  subject,  a  confessed  narcotics  user  offered 
as  a  demonstration  to  buy  drugs  on  almost  any 
corner  in  the  downtown  district  on  a  few 
minutes'  notice,  and  nobody  seemed  to  feel  that 
this  suggestion  was  improbable. 

The  suicide  rate  in  San  Francisco  is  also  high, 
three  times  the  national  average.  A  favorite  form 
of  self-destruction  is  to  jump  off  the  Golden  Gate 
Bridge;  almost  two  hundred  persons  have  done 
so,  and  a  lot  more  have  been  stopped  by  alert 
motorists  as  they  were  climbing  over  the  railing. 

The  psychiatrists  offer  several  explanations  for 
one  or  more  of  these  phenomena.  San  Fran- 
ciscans have  had  a  reputation  as  hard  drinkers, 
going  back  to  the  earliest  days,  and  a  cultural 
tradition  of  this  sort  is  more  important  than 
many  people  realize.  The  cold,  damp  climate 
encourages  the  consumption  of  gin  and  whiskey; 


even  though  there  is  a  big  Italian  colony,  and 
large  amounts  of  excellent  wine  are  made  only  a 
few  miles  away  to  the  north  and  south,  San  Fran- 
ciscans have  never  become  wine  drinkers,  though 
they  do  better  than  the  inhabitants  of  most  other 
American  cities. 

California  has  far  more  than  her  normal  share 
of  the  nation's  neurotics  and  crackpots,  the 
unstable  characters  who  move  from  community 
to  community.  These  human  tumbleweeds  have 
always  had  a  tendency  to  drift  toward  the  West, 
until  they  pile  up  along  the  edge  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  Many  of  them  find  a  spiritual  home  in 
the  environs  of  Los  Angeles;  but  some  others 
feel  out  of  place  in  the  brisk  go-getter  atmosphere 
of  that  community,  move  north  four  hundred 
miles,  and  end  up  killing  themselves,  or  vegetat- 
ing among  the  hopeless  drunks  of  San  Francisco's 
Skid  Row.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  theory. 

"THE    PAPERS    ARE    TERRIBLE" 

IT  I S  a  ritual  among  the  San  Francisco  in- 
tellectuals, as  it  is  in  every  city,  to  announce 
that  daily  journalism  is  at  a  very  low  ebb.  "The 
papers  are  simply  awful,"  they  tell  one  another. 
"Nothing  in  them  but  a  lot  of  crime  and  beauty 
contests."  To  be  sure,  it  always  turns  out  on 
inquiry  that  these  intellectuals  have  not  read 
whatever  good,  solid  news  of  politics  and  eco- 
nomics the  papers  did  publish. 

"I've  been  rushing  around  like  mad;  haven't 
looked  at  a  paper  for  days,"  is  the  explanation, 
with  the  owlish  addition,  "I'm  sure  I  haven't 
missed  much." 

The  intellectuals  are  somewhat  unfair  to  San 
Francisco  journalism  of  today.  Of  its  five  chief 
daily  newspapers,  four  belong  to  national  chains, 
and  are  certainly  up  to  or  slightly  ahead  of  the 
national  average  for  a  city  of  this  size.  The  local 
edition  of  the  Wall  Street  Journal  is  almost 
identical  with  the  one  in  New  York;  and  there 
are  a  Scripps-Howard  paper,  the  News,  and 
morning  and  evening  Hearst  journals,  the 
Examiner  and  the  Call-Bulletin.  The  fifth  paper 
is  the  Chronicle,  much  the  most  interesting  of  the 
lot  to  any  student  of  the  press.  It  has  very  few 
syndicated  features,  but  a  flock  of  local  writers 
and  artists,  and  their  material,  while  naturally  of 
uneven  quality,  has  the  indigenous  flavor  so  com- 
pletely missing  from  most  American  journalism 
today.  (Several  Chronicle  writers  and  artists  are 
good  enough  to  be  syndicated  from  their  San 
Francisco  base.)  While  this  paper  has  its-ups  and 
downs,  at  its  best  it  is  more  like  the  old  morning 
New  York  World  than  any  other  I  know  of. 


42 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


Jo  Los  Angeles 
Any  San  Franciscan  regards  the  suggestion  that  he  move  to  the  suburbs  as  insane. 


Ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  time,  the  San  Fran- 
cisco papers  remember  that  theirs  is  a  sophisti- 
cated world  city,  and  act  accordingly.  Two  un- 
important exceptions:  They  love  to  report  when 
local  boy  or  girl  makes  good,  in  any  capacity,  in 
New  York,  and  they  record  every  article  about 
San  Francisco  appearing  in  the  national  press, 
with  the  appropriate  words  of  praise  or  reproof. 

It  is  a  mark  of  San  Francisco's  charm  that  so 
many  of  its  newspapermen  (as  well  as  other 
writers)  have  produced  books  that  are  in  fact 
long  love  letters  to  the  city.  The  chief  current 
example,  and  one  of  the  most  prolific,  is 
columnist,  Herb  Caen,  currently  in  the  Chron- 
icle, who  spins  endless  thousands  of  words  about 
"Baghdad-by-the-Bay"  without  seeming  to  do 
more  than  keep  up  with  the  unwearying  demand 
of  his  fascinated  readers. 

NO    MANIA     FOR    GROWTH 

SA  N  Francisco's  serious  trouble,  mentioned 
earlier,  is  something  forced  upon  her  by 
commuters  from  the  surrounding  region.  The 
city  itself  is.  remarkable  in  that  it  shares  little  if 
at  all  in  the  current  American  mania  for  un- 
limited growth,  regardless  of  the  quality  of  that 
growth.  There  are  no  big  billboards  as  you  ap- 
proach the  city,  signed  by  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce, proudly  showing  that  the  population  has 


doubled  in  the  past  few  years,  and  bragging  that 
it  will  be  five  times  larger  in  1980.  It  is  true  that 
the  population  is  growing,  but  so  slowly— com- 
pared to  Los  Angeles,  for  example— that  it  seems 
like  a  crawl.  In  1930,  the  city  had  634,394;  ten 
years  later,  it  had  increased  by  only  142  people, 
to  634,536.  The  war  brought  a  bulge  to  775,000 
in  the  1950  census,  and  another  35,000  (esti- 
mated) have  been  added  in  the  past  seven  years. 
California  as  a  whole  has  doubled  while  San 
Francisco  has  gone  up  only  27  per  cent. 

This  lack  of  frenetic  emphasis  on  growth  is 
certainly  due  in  part  to  the  superior  sophistica- 
tion of  the  San  Franciscans,  who  enjoy  their  town 
so  much  that  they  see  no  reason  for  sharing  it 
with  a  lot  of  strangers;  but  there  are  also  some 
other  factors.  San  Francisco  City  and  County 
(which  are  coterminous)  are  bounded  on  three 
sides  by  water  and  on  the  fourth  by  San  Mateo 
County;  there  is  very  little  room  left  in  the  city 
for  additional  long  rows  of  gray-white  houses, 
the  indigenous  architectural  expression. 

More  people  could  be  accommodated,  and 
conditions  in  general  made  more  miserable,  by 
erecting  a  lot  of  skyscraper  apartment  buildings, 
and  in  fact  there  are  a  few  of  these  on  the 
highest  hills,  with  rents  that  are  stiff  even  by  New 
York  standards.  But  apartment  houses  of  this 
type  are  unlikely  ever  to  be  popular.  San  Fran- 
ciscans have  vividly  in  the  backs  of  their  minds 


SAN     FRANCISCO:     NEW     SERPENTS     IN     EDEN 


43 


the  earthquake  and  fire  of  1906  which  killed  sev- 
eral hundred  people  and  did  damage  of  hundreds 
of  millions  of  dollars.  Nowadays,  the  builders  say 
confidently  that  steel  and  concrete  construction 
is  earthquake-proof;  but  the  San  Franciscans 
maintain  their  mass  aversion  to  living  higher 
than  the  second  or  third  story.  Moreover,  they 
are  still  Californians,  after  all,  and  they  like  at 
least  a  scrap  of  garden  of  their  own. 

But  if  the  city  by  the  Golden  Gate  is  miracu- 
lously satisfied  with  its  size,  the  same  cannot  be 
said  for  its  suburbs.  Southern-California-type 
boosterism  has  crept  north  like  the  smog,  and  its 
enveloping  tentacles  are  now  ominously  close  to 
San  Francisco  on  all  sides.  Vis-a-vis  the  suburbs, 
San  Francisco  is  in  the  position  of  Laocoon,  with 
the  boys  on  the  side  of  the  serpents. 

In  Marin  County  to  the  north,  among  the  East 
Shore  communities,  and  down  the  Peninsula  into 
the  Santa  Clara  Valley,  beautiful  little  towns  of  a 
generation  ago  are  frantically  trying  to  ruin 
themselves  with  masses  of  new  population— and 
in  most  cases  are  succeeding.  The  number  of 
people  increases  so  fast  that  even  with  tardy  San 
Francisco  added,  the  population  of  the  entire 
area  has  been  doubling  about  every  seventeen 
years.  Lovely  (and  highly  profitable)  fruit 
orchards  are  bulldozed  to  a  pulp,  to  be  succeeded 
by  row  upon  row  of  tacked-together  little  houses 
in  "California  modern"  style,  each  with  two-car 
garage,  flagged  patio,  and  outdoor  barbecue.  The 
overwhelming  majority  of  these  are  sold  on  the 
installment  plan,  with  a  down  payment  as  small 
as  the  law  permits  and  the  balance  "like  rent." 
If  we  had  a  sharp  depression,  thousands  of  these 
houses  would  go  back  to  the  bank,  to  be  resold 
or  rented;  experts  on  planning  believe  that  large 
areas  might  then  degenerate  into  semi-slums. 
(This  huge  increment  does  not,  of  course,  repre- 
sent a  flight  from  the  city,  as  it  does  in  other 
parts  of  America.  Any  San  Franciscan  would 
regard  the  suggestion  that  he  go  and  live  some- 
where else  as  insane.) 

Just  why  the  Chambers  of  Commerce  of  all 
these  towns  (and  many  private  citizens)  work  so 
hard  to  commit  suicide  by  overpopulation  is 
something  of  a  mystery.  The  growth  would  be 
bad  enough  without  any  encouragement  at  all. 
While  a  few  individuals  make  money  out  of  the 
influx,  even  these  are  disadvantaged  in  the  end 
by  the  wholesale  destruction  of  the  amenities  of 
life,  and  for  most  of  the  population  the  entire 
development  is  a  net  loss.  Having  swamped  the 
community  with  new  low-income  residents,  most 
of  whom  cost  more  in  public  services  than  they 
pay  in  taxes,  the  Chambers  of  Commerce  turn 


around  and  try  to  bring  in  industry  to  carry  part 
of  the  load  which  they  themselves  have  willfully 
produced.  Economically,  this  proposition  is  often 
a  dubious  one:  industry  itself  demands  special 
and  sometimes  expensive  service  from  the  com- 
munity. You  practically  never  hear  of  any  town 
where  the  tax  rate  goes  down  after  industry 
comes;  and  miles  of  factories  damage  the 
amenities  even  farther.  The  suburbs  have  con- 
tributed to  a  smog  problem  that  has  caused  deep 
concern,  and  vigorous  action  to  try  to  cure  it. 

WERE    THE    BRIDGES 
A      MISTAKE? 

EVERY  city  has  elderly  mourners,  like  me, 
proclaiming  that  things  are  not  as  good  as 
the  old  days.  In  my  case,  having  begun  to  live 
in  San  Francisco,  intermittently,  in  1908,  I  can 
fix  the  date  of  disaster  closely:  1936,  when  the 
first  of  the  two  great  bridges  was  built.  These 
are  among  the  proudest,  most  dramatic  and 
beautiful  overwater  structures  in  the  world.  One 
of  them  crosses  the  Bay  to  Oakland  and  is  among 
the  longest  of  its  kind  on  earth;  the  other  spans 
the  Golden  Gate  itself  to  Marin  County  and  is 
the  world's  greatest  single  arch.  At  night,  when 
the  Bay  Bridge  strings  its  necklace  of  light  above 
the  dark  waters,  or  in  the  late  afternoon,  as  the 
Golden  Gate  Bridge  disappears  to  its  tower  tops 
into  the  swirling  fog,  they  lift  the  heart  with 
their  beauty. 

Yet  it  is  not  hard  to  see  that  from  some  points 
of  view  these  bridges  were  a  mistake.  Across 
them,  and  up  the  narrow  bottleneck  of  the 
Peninsula,  300,000  commuters  swarm  into  San 
Francisco  every  morning  and  swarm  back  again 
at  night— adding  one-half  to  the  city's  adult 
population.  Both  these  bridges,  and  the  Bay- 
shore  Freeway,  the  chief  artery  leading  down  the 
Peninsula,  long  ago  reached  what  seemed  to  be 
the  limit  of  saturation;  yet  always  a  few  more 
cars  manage  to  squeeze  into  the  flood.  These 
daily  visitors  congest  the  traffic  in  San  Francisco's 
streets  until  it  is  almost  as  bad  as  in  New  York  or 
London.  Finding  a  place  to  park  is  a  desperate 
problem;  the  building  of  new  garages  in  the 
business  district  falls  far  behind  the  steady 
growth  of  traffic,  and  in  San  Francisco,  as  in 
so  many  other  places,  downtown  is  seriously 
threatened  with  decay. 

The  commuters  constitute  an  important  share 
of  San  Francisco's  businessmen;  yet  as  indi- 
viduals, they  pay  no  taxes  there,  nor  do  they 
participate,  as  residents,  in  the  city's  political 
or  social  life.   Even  economically,  they  are  largely 


II 


II  A  It  r  I    It    S      M    V  (.  A  /  I  N  I 


dioiii  .     lIllCI    IllOSl   "I   tin  ii    1 1 '  >  1 1  .<  1 1  <  >  I  <  I   jiiii  i  li.i   in)" 

i .  cloni   ill    hopping  centcri  neai  i  hen  homi 
'••■in.   oi  i in   problcmi  created  by  i his  pattei n 

.J    ■  1 .  1 1 1  \    i  <  >  i tiii'     .inn    .iliini.i     1 1 1  ,i  ill  1 1  ili      the 

withdrawal  ol  10  many  g I  citizens  from  the 

city's  hi' .  and  i licit   failure  to  pa)   theii   share 

•  J  i  in  ii  mi  iii  1 1 H  coiiui  .inni  1 1  n  j  1 1 1 .1 1 1      in  N  j 
1. 1  1 1 1 1 1  up  wild  i in    physical  problem  ihc  itatc 

.ii  H I  1 1  ii  ■  n  \  logcthei  have  laced  the dty 

whIi   greni    freeways,    1 1 1 1 ■■.      in  i    and    concrete 

ii mi  i  ■    running  I" u  ii  ol  iheii   li  ngt li  on 

stills,  destroying  the  beauty  iii  man)  parts  ol  th< 
town     i  in  1 1   .in  -,t ill  more  ol  th<  ■<■  freeways  lo 

■ '      i  in   J.  ,i'  in  i  .  have  done  i  hcii  best  with 

i  in    ii  i  ii.  iiii  i  ,    I  mm   i.i  i  n  i    in  iw   symmetrical 

i in  arches,  and  how  dramatii   the  ''ill ettc,  an 

elevated     ipecdway     is    still     just     i  hal    sy . 

odoril ii  ii H I  blot  I  iug  the  \  lew     m si  i  vi  ry 

i  .ii  mi  .i  [rccwuy,  .>i  coui sc,  m  oni    | i  oi  an 

hi  in  i  comes  dow to  the  city  streets,  making 

1 1 ii".  .n. hi  i  \ 1 1 1  worm 

i  in    people   "i    i lir   i  n\    iinii'i    i <  .i 1 1 \    t  now 

w  ii.H    i..  .in  in   theii    dil hi    nor,  so   Eai    as 

i  .  hi  discover,  do<     inj i  i  Isc     i  hci c  Is  talk 

..i   ,i   hngi    in  w    rupid-ti ansii   systi  in,  extending 
thirty  oi  tort)  miles  In  ill  direct s  (excepi  the 


iii.    hope  would  be  thai   the  automobile 

"> uteri  would  then  leave  theii  can  ai  home, 

i  hen   i>  also  talk  ol  a  string  ol  peripheral  park 

in:;    lotS,    Willi    lin     m     imi\|«ii.hi      bus    Service 

iinin  i In  in  in  i in  in  ,ii  i  ni  the  i  us  Neil hei  ol 
these  plans  has  worked  very  well  in  any  othei 
•  i  mi  in  u  1 1 1 1  \  Someone  sometimes  suggests  a 
special  Lax  on  commuters,  politically  unworkable 
.iimI  probably  un<  onsi itutional. 


M 


i   .  it  i.  K  «•  it  i)  i  \  i. 

i    VN  WHILE,   San   Fri scans  seem 

in  me  remarkably  patient  undci  theii 
ordeal  I  hi  j  do  noi  descend  upon  the  sub* 
inlis  wiih  i iii<  him ks  .iikI  shotguns,  as  you 
might  expect;  feeling  themselves,  as  inhabitants 

■  ■I   il i\.  blessed  beyond  ordinary  mortals, 

theii  charity  is  largei  than  life-size,  Gazing  ai 
iin  towers  "i  the  <  - < •  N I < - ■  ■  Gate  Bridge  rising  in 
the  'ii'  alii  moon  from  the  cottony  fog,  oi  look 

ni"  down  from  Nob  Mill  ai  nighi  ui the  vasl 

panorama  ol  shii ering  lights  below,  they  Eoi 

give  the  despoilcrs. 

Alii  i  .ill.  the  sea,  ii>«  bay,  and  the  mountains 
are  si  ill  here.   Ami  snii  intat  t. 


1 1  I  I )  I )  I ,  IN    I  l{  I :  A  S  I "  R  IS   I  IN    I )  A  R  KEST  1 1  n  IM )  K  E  IN 

IN    I  1 1  i    i  iii  lie.  i  <l.i\s  iii  the  .H  "i  1 1 H  bomb  projei  i  there  was,  "I  course,  .i  require 
in  in  lui  .i  considerable  tonnagi  ol  ura ire,   Uranium  al  thai  nine  had  very 

limited  commercial  importance  coloring  .'i  vases  and  radium  was  .ii>.mi  .ill  so 
\.i\  hill.  w.i.  mined  K  reprcscntativi  "I  the  U,  S  governmeni  sought  <>m  the 
in. m  who,  as  the  head  <>i  the  Belgian  concern  thai  had  been  mining  uranium  i<h 
radium  in  the  Congo,  might  help  out.  Well,  the  Germans  had  taken  ovei  in 
iiu.i|.<  1 1 1. 1  this  in. in  Edgai  Scrigiei  ol  the  i  nion  Miniere  was  in  ihc  United 
States  i  in  1 1 1 H  i  mi  1 1. 1 1  n  c  ni  i  in  ii-  s.i  m  came  i<»  this  man  .mil  said,  "The  U  Si 
governmeni  would  1 1 k < ■  to  gel  -i  big  tonnage  "I  uranium  ore  We  thought  thai 
you  mighi  be  tin  man  i<>  mine  sunn-  i>>i  n-.  Mow  long  will  it  take  to  get  us  .i 
large  tonnagi  Sengiei  answered,  "Well,  we  arc  now  al  the  Waldorl  Vstoria. 
How  long  will  ii  take  .«  taxi  to  gel  i<>  the  docks  in  Hobokeni  I  he  largest  reserve 
nl  uranium  ore  i ii.it  I  know  ,>i  is  ritthl  here,  in  •>  warehouse,  in  ii<<-  New  Vork 


Well,  "in  Belgian  friend,  instead  >>i  leaving  uranium  around,  had  put  it  in 
steel  drums,  shipped  il  i<>  flohokcn,  and  stored  it  there,  s<>.  in  .<  way,  the  Rrsl 
i. ii"i  scale  uranium  m.   mining  \ v . t ^  in  Hoboken 

David  I  iii.iuii.il.  speaking  i<>  the  American  Institute  ol  Mining  and  Metal- 
(urgii  id  i  ngineet s,  i  ebt  uat  j   i(>.  1955 


James  and    Annette  Baxter 


THE  MAN 

in  the  Blue 
Suede  Shoes 


01'  Elvia  Presley  may  be  a  better 

musician    than   mosl    people   dare    lo   admit — 

and  be  might  be  offering  ibe  kids  a 

commodity  their  parents  can't  recognize. 

AS  A  subject  for  polemic  Elvis  Presley  has 
lew  peers,  and  too  many  people  have  ex- 
perienced sudden  shifts  in  blood  pressure  either 
up  or  down— for  him  to  be  regarded  as  any- 
thing hm  an  authentic  barometer  of  the  times. 
But,  even  now  that  he  has  been  on  the  national 
scene  for  more  than  two  years,  he  may  be  telling 
ns  mote  about  ourselves  than  we  would  care  to 
admit. 

Presley's  climb  to  lame,  in  the  winter  of  1955- 
56,  followed  upon  the  appearance  of  thai  rau- 
cous brand  of  popular  music,  primitive  and 
heavy-Tooled,  known  as  roc  k-and-roll.  I  Intone  lied 
by  subtlety,  rock-and-roll  seemed  to  signal  a 
total   collapse   in   popular  taste,    the   final   schism 

between  a  diminishing  group  sensitive  to  tradi- 
tion and  the  great  bulk  of  those  who  make  enter- 
tainment lo  sell.  Suddenly  there  was  Elvis,  no1 
merely  a  manifestation  of  rock-and-roll,  bui  of 
lascivious  gyrations  of  the  torso  thai  older  gen- 
erations cjuickly  recognized— the  classic  bump 
and  grind  ol    the  si  rip-leaser. 

Television  compounded  the  jeopardy:  Ml  vis 
could  come  lurching  into  any  living-room,  and 
he  did,  and   die  chorus  of  adolescent  shrieks  was 

swelled  by  shrieks  from  the  parents.    The  stomp- 


ing blatancy  of  "Blue  Suede  Shoes"  and  the  in- 
sinuations of  "I  Want  You,  I  Need  You,  I  Love 
You"  were  sufficiently  distressing,  but  the  loot- 
spread  stance  and  (he  unmistakable  thrust— well, 
"The  Pelvis"  was  going  too  far. 

He  went  too  far  in  every  direction.  Elvis  was 
making  millions  of  dollars,  owning  white  Con- 
tinental Mark  lis,  getting  into  fights  and  reviv- 
ing sideburns  and  being  prayed  over  and  build- 
ing a  bouse  lor  his  parents.  The  legend  should 
have  swallowed  him  out  of  sight,  but  il  was  all 
true— all,  furthermore,  palpably  American.  Me 
may  not  actually  have  arrived  lor  his  Army 
physical  in  a  Cadillac  with  a  Las  Vegas  show 
girl  and  announced  that  he  wanted  lo  be  Healed 
just  like  everyone  else— but  (he  story  was  pure 
Elvis.  Anyway,  the  gawky,  loose-limbed,  simple 
boy  from  Tupelo,  Mississippi,  was  a  genuine 
tabula  rasa,  on  which  the  American  populace 
could  keep  drawing  its  portrait,  real  and  imag- 
inary, and  keep  rubbing  it  out. 

Admonished  thai  there  were  those  who  found 
his  hip-swiveling  offensive,  Elvis  is  said  to  have 
replied,  "I  never  made  no  dirty  body  move- 
ments." And  this  is  believable;  Elvis  moves  as 
the  spirit  moves  him;  it  all  comes  naturally. 
Hormones  How  in  him  as  serenely  as  the  Missis- 
sippi past  Memphis,  and  the  offense  lies  in  the 
eye  of  the  beholder,  not  in  Elvis'  intentions. 

By  constantly  reminding  his  teen-age  listeners 
of  what  he  so  obviously  was— a  simple  boy  from 
Tupelo  who  had  suddenly  become  famous— 
Elvis  somehow  removed  the  sling  from  the  sex- 
uality   thai    could    easily    have    terrified    them. 

Valentino   had   lo   become  an   exotic    in   order   to 

keep  from  frightening  the  ladies  of  an  earliei  era 
with  his  own  heavy-lidded  gaze;  Elvis  could 
remain   the  boy  next   door,    lie  was  even  able  lo 

capitalize  on  his  innocence:  in  his  television  ap- 
pearances he  could  linel  himself  Hinging  a 
Svengali-like  finger  oui  toward  his  audience'  and, 
when  they  squealed,  he  couldn't  keep  from  gig- 
gling, lie  was  as  amused  as  they  were  by  his 
idiotic  power  lo  hypnotize  and,  although  the 
spell  was  on,  the  curse  was  oil. 

\\u[  Presley's  stunning  rapport  with  his  own 
generation  must  hinge  on  something  more 
than  the  ageless  call  of  the  wild.  Appealing 
lo  the  youthful  imagination  in  some  way  inscru- 
table to  the  parents  of  the  teen-agers  who  wor- 
ship him,  Elvis  fills  some  kind  of  need  thai  the 
older  generation  can't  fathom,  and  more  signili- 
eanlly,  doesn't  feel.  Why?  Perhaps  because  they 
have  run  oui  of  dreams. 

Parents  for  whom  the  introduction  ol  tele- 
vision in  the  late  'forties  begat   the  era  of  the 


46 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


great  giveaway  need  no  dreams— they  are  already 
li\  ing  one.  Ranch-style  homes,  organization-man 
jobs,  and  exalted  community  status  have  outrun 
whatever  hopes  they  brought  from  a  meager 
past,  and  adults  are  too  delightedly  clutching 
these  tangible  evidences  of  a  dream-come-true 
to  bother  projecting  a  more  fanciful  one.  Their 
small ly-executed  station-wagon  psyches,  jauntily 
upholstered  and  gleamingly  trimmed;  leave  no 
room  for  excrescences  and  irrelevancies.  But 
their  offspring,  a  generation  of  poor  little  rich 
children,  whom  no  part  of  the  postwar  bonanza 
has  the  power  to  enthrall,  remain  desperately 
in  need  of  an  enchanter. 


THE     MYSTERIOUS     SOUTH 

TO  MEET  this  historic  contingency  Elvis 
is  blessed  not  only  with  sex  but  with 
authentic  Southci  nncss.  His  prim  it  i  \  ism  carries 
conviction;  when  he  intones  the  monotonous 
phrases  of  "I  Got  a  Woman,"  Southern  medium 
espouses  Southern  temperament.  The  range  of 
verbal  expression  is  precisely  as  limited  and  as 
colorful  as  we  feel  Elvis'  own  vocabulary  must 
be.  The  voice,  on  the  other  hand,  insisting  on 
the  subtlest  of  shifts  in  mood  and  timing,  sug- 
gests that  the  man  from  whom  it  issues  is,  like 
his  music,  elusive. 

The  sum  of  Presley's  qualities  matches  the 
national  image  of  the  Southland.  For  the  South 
today  popularly  represents  what  the  West  once 
did:  the  self-sufficient,  the  inaccessible,  the 
fiercely  independent  soul  of  the  nation.  With 
i he  taming  of  the  West  completed,  only  the  deep 
South  retains  a  comparable  aura  of  mystery,  of 
romantic  removal  from  the  concerns  of  a  steadily 
urbanized  and  cosmopolized  America. 

The  removal  is  two-fold:  it  combines  an  in- 
difference to  grammatical  niceties,  which  the  rest 
of  the  country  benightedly  associates  with 
"civilization,"  with  an  old  confidence  in  the 
private,  intuitive  vision.  The  rationalism  of  the 
"progressive"  sections  of  the  nation  has  always 
seemed  to  the  Southerner  inadequate  to  pene- 
trate the  darker  corners  of  his  experience,  and 
these  components  of  the  Southern  mind  are 
central  to  a  Presley  performance. 

The  adolescent  is  far  more  responsive  to  them 
than  his  parents  could  be.  In  the  backwoods 
heterodoxies  of  Elvis  he  recognizes  a  counter- 
pan  to  his  own  instinctive  rebellion.  And  when 
Elvis  confesses  that  he's  "Gonna  Sit  Right  Down 
and  Cay,"  the  accents  of  lament  are  fell  as 
genuine;  there's  none  of  the  artifice  of  the  torch- 
singer  in  his  wail.    Elvis  is  for  real,  and  in  his 


voice  the  teen-ager  hears  intimations  of  a  world 
heavily  weighted  with  real  emotion. 

Most  real  emotions,  the  teen-ager  knows  with- 
out coaching,  are  daily  discredited  by  his  parents 
and  teachers.  Their  own  equably  democratic 
temperaments  and  cheerfully  enlightened  code 
of  behavioi  seem  to  deny  the  world  that  Elvis 
affirms.  And  the  teen-ager,  when  he  pounds  con- 
vulsively at  the  sight  and  sound  of  Elvis,  is 
pounding  for  entrance  into  that  more  enticing 
realm. 

He  is  pounding  his  feet,  however:  ultimately 
the  music  Elvis  makes  must  be  given  some  credit 
for  his  popularity.  And  there  is  probably  an 
ugly,  awesome  little  truth  in  the  deduction  that 
he  is  prodigiously  gifted.  To  those  attentive  to 
the  music  itself  the  most  conspicuous  feature  of 
Elvis'  singing  is  the  versatility  with  which  he 
exploits  the  tradition  of  the  Negro  "blues- 
shouter."  He  can  shift  without  apparent  strain 
from  the  blasting  stridency  of  "Hound  Dog"  to 
the  saccharine  ooze  of  "111  Never  Let  You  Go," 
covering,  when  called  upon,  every  transitional 
pose  between:  the  choke-and-groan  of  "Love 
Me,"  the  plaintive  nasal  whine  of  "How's  the 
World  Treating  You,"  the  gravel-throated  bel- 
low of  "Long  Tall  Sally,"  or  the  throb-and- 
tremolo  of  "1  Got  a  Woman." 

Vocal  pyrotechnics  he  has  indeed  (to  what  must 
be  the  everlasting  despair  of  his  imitators),  but 
they  would  remain  merely  curiosities  were  he  not 
able  to  manipulate  them  into  an  organic  whole. 
His  twisting  of  a  tonal  quality  possesses  a 
diabolical  inevitability,  and  his  phrasing  is  as' 
flawless  as  it  is  intricate.  Marianne  Moore's  com- 
ment about  e.  e.  cummings— "He  does  not  make 
aesthetic  mistakes"— might  with  only  brief  hesi- 
tation be  applied  to  Elvis  Presley.  Elvis  has  got 
the  beat,  and  "Don't  Be  Cruel"  will  bear  scrutiny 
by  any  but  the  most  outraged  of  his  captious 
audience. 


LAUGHING    AT    US 

BU  T  there  is  in  Presley's  delivery  something 
much  more  subtle  and  hard  to  get  at.  From 
some  fathomless  and  unstudied  depth  he  has 
managed,  in  a  whole  series  of  songs,  to  call  forth 
irony.  Elvis  is  laughing  at  us,  and  at  himself, 
without  knowing  it,  and  while  remaining  alto- 
gether serious.  The  throbbing  sentimentality  is 
at  once  wholly  fake  and  sterling  pure;  listen  for 
it  in  "I'm  Counting  on  You,"  or  "Tryin'  to 
Get  to  You."  And  so  is  the  pompousness  of 
"One-Sided  Love  Affair"  and  the  mawkishness 
of  "Old  Shep."    In  his  interpretation   of   these 


A     REFUSAL     TO     MOURN,     ETC 


47 


songs  there  are  ambiguities  that  are  surely  unsus- 
pected even  by  such  an  uninhibited  and  highly 
sophisticated  primitive  as  Elvis  himself. 

This  neither-fish-npr-fowl  quality  can  be  a 
frightening  thing  to  adults,  who  suppose  that 
they  have  fully  identified  themselves  in  an  identi- 
fiable environment.  But  to  adolescents,  who 
detest  above  all  the  status  quo— who  want  the 
world  to  be  so  limitless  in  its  potentials  that  they 
cannot  fail  to  find  their  changeling  selves  some- 
how secure  within  it— to  them  it  is  the  throbbing 
substance  of  life  itself.  And  when  combined  with 
the  frenetic  pulsations,  the  hectic,  nervous 
quiverings  of  rock-and-roll,  the  rhythms  of  their 
own  vacillations,  it  is  enough  to  make  Elvis  a 
millionaire. 

Whither  Presley?  When  his  present  public 
finds  itself,  as  it  someday  must,  demesmerized  by 
time,  and  when  the  mage-like  fascination  of  Elvis 
gives  way  to  some  new  and  less  inspired  teen-age 
melodrama,  what's  to  become  of  this  young  man 


whose  life  and  legend  are  by  now  indistinguish- 
able? 

Will  Elvis  himself  be  able  to  salvage  a  per- 
sonality from  among  the  accumulated  debris  of 
prolonged  public  exposure?  Will  he  choose  one 
of  several  paths  systematically  trodden  by  the 
once  great:  lucratively  "advising"  the  producers 
of  "The  Elvis  Presley  Story,"  lecturing  across 
the  country  on  the  prevention  of  juvenile  de- 
linquency, opening  with  moderate  hoopla  a 
restaurant  in  Atlantic  City,  appointing  a  re- 
spectable hack  to  ghost  his  memoirs,  or  posing 
rakishly  for  a   Chesterfield   ad? 

Some  indication  that  Elvis  has  a  notion  of  the 
responsibility  of  his  mission  is  his  plan  for  a 
fifteen-acre  Elvis  Presley  Youth  Foundation  in 
Tupelo,  reported  in  Time.  How  far  this  project 
may  go  is  uncertain,  but  if  it  takes  him  back  to 
Mississippi  for  spiritual  recuperation  from  time 
to  time,  it  will  be  both  good  for  him  and  for  the 
youth  who  want  him,  need  him,  and  love  him. 


LLOYD  FRANKENBERG 


A  REFUSAL  TO   MOURN,  ETC. 


how  the  backhanders  geese  of  you, 
Each  with  a  bloody  piece  of  you 

Snagged  from  their  lion's  feast. 

God  but  you'd  laugh  to  hear  of  i$ 
You  that  would  not  steer  clear  of  it, 
You  that  could  charm  the  beast. 

Propping  him  up  to  mock  awhile 
Lachryma  Christi  Crocodile 
In  his  penatal  lare. 

Lover  of  ale  and  venery, 
Tales  of  the  jailed  O.  Henry, 

Rarebitten  hound  of  the  hare, 

Everyone  owns  a  share  in  you. 
If  it's  a  he,  he'll  air  a  new 
Gospel  ol  thick-as- thieves 

Making  a  propel   toast  of  you. 
If  it's  a  she,  she'll  boast  of  you 
Adam  beneath  her  eaves. 

Hear  them  retail  your  Iliad 
Scattering  bombs  in  Gilead, 

Toppling  the  weights  of  Troy; 

Gossip  of  tidbit  bodicey 
On  your  immodest  Odyssey. 
You  were  the  wicked  boy, 


Roisterous,  roaring,  rantical 
Under  the  soaring  canticle, 
Under  the  tragic  breath; 

Lusty  indeed  and  verbally, 
Master  of  all  hyperbole 

Whether  of  joy  or  death. 

Once  on  a  snarling  boulevard, 
Bristling  and  jostling,  full  of  hard 

Rooters,  you  gripped  my  arm- 
People,  aren't  people  beautiful? 
I  was  the  meanest  brute  of  all. 

Truth  was  a  Circe's  charm. 

Would  that  an  untruth  did  as  he 
Would  that  unhelled  Eurydice 
Back  to  the  shades  of  day 

Till— was  it  doubt,  disaster  or 
Love?— was  his  overmastered 
Turned  him  the  other  way 

There,  where  the  echoes  come  to  us, 
Magical,  haunted,  sumptuous, 
Spun  with  a  seethe  of  fire 

Nessus-reversed  to  smother  death. 
After  the  first,  no  other  death. 
Air  is  their  chiming  choir. 


The  second  of  three  articles  by 
RALPH   E.    LAPP 

Drawings  by  Ben  Shahn 


The  Voyage  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 


The  twenty-three  fishermen  didn't  realize 

what  had  happened  to  them — and  had  no  idea 

that  their  homecoming  would  touch  off  an 

uproar  which  would  echo  around  the  world. 


AT  5:30  a.m.  on  Sunday,  March  14,  1954, 
the  Japanese  fishing  vessel  Fukuryu  Maru 
(Lucky  Dragon)  No.  5  returned  to  its  home  port 
of  Yaizu,  some  120  miles  south  of  Tokyo.  Its 
crew  had  been  fishing  for  tuna  near  the  Marshall 
Islands  and  had  seen  the  flash  of  an  American 
atomic  bomb  test;  shortly  afterward  a  rain  of 
white  ash  had  fallen  on  the  ship.  During  their 
return  trip  the  men  had  been  listless  and  debili- 
tated; some  complained  of  burning  eyes,  itching 
skin,  and  nausea;  others  were  losing  their  hair. 
The  owner,  Kakuichi  Nishikawa,  glanced  at  one 
of  the  sailors  when  the  boat  tied  to  the  pier  and 
noticed  that  he  was  terribly  dark,  as  though 
deeply  sunburned. 

Nishikawa  and  Yoshio  Misaki,  the  ship's  Fish- 
ing Master,  immediately  called  the  Yaizu  hos- 
pital, but  it  was  Sunday  and  the  woman  who 
answered  told  Misaki  that  they  could  accept  only 
emergency  cases.  It  was  not  until  he  managed 
to  locate  Dr.  Ooi,  the  doctor  in  charge,  that 
Misaki  could  arrange  for  the  men  to  come  to  the 
hospital  at  1:00  p.m.  Dr.  Ooi  was  a  surgeon,  who 
felt  that  routine  physical  checkups  were  not  in 


his  bailiwick,  and  at  first  he  could  make  no  sense 
of  the  men's  appearance.  Though  their  faces 
were  dark,  they  seemed  in  good  spirits.  Sanjiro 
Masuda,  who  looked  the  worst,  was  severely 
burned  on  the  face,  ears,  and  lips,  and  there 
were  three  or  four  blisters  on  his  left  hand. 
"What's  this  all  about?"  asked  Dr.  Ooi.  "What's 
the  matter  with  all  of  you?" 

Fearful  of  authority  in  any  form,  the  fisher- 
men were  at  first  reluctant  to  say.  Finally  one 
of  them  confessed  that  they  had  encountered 
what  they  thought  was  an  A-bomb  explosion. 
But  when  Dr.  Ooi  asked  them  how  bright  the 
flash  had  been,  or  whether  they  had  seen  the 
mushroom  cloud,  their  answers  still  puzzled  him. 
Since  Misaki  said  that  the  light  had  not  been 
blinding,  they  must  have  been  a  safe  distance 
away;  indeed,  if  they  hadn't  been,  some  of  them 
should  already  have  died.  The  men  did  not  seem 
seriously  ill;  their  blood  counts  ran  from  5,000 
to  9,000  white  cells  per  cubic  centimeter— not  an 
alarming  decrease.  Dr.  Ooi  wavered,  doubting 
and  believing  what   their  symptoms  were. 

Five  of  the  patients  with  bad  skin  burns  he 
treated  with  palliative  ointment,  a  white  paste 
that  contrasted  strangely  with  their  brown-black 
faces.  Since  there  was  no  Geiger  counter  in  the 
hospital,  and  since  he  could  not  diagnose  radia- 
tion sickness  with  any  confidence,  Dr.  Ooi  was 
not  unduly  alarmed  over  their  condition.  "Come 
again  tomorrow  and  let's  have  an  examination 

©  1957   by  Ralph  E.  Lapp 


THE     VOYAGE     OF     THE     LUCKY     DRAGON 


49 


with  all  the  doctors,"  he  said,  and  sent  them  on 
their  way,  greatly  relieved. 

But  Misaki  brooded  over  the  condition  of  the 
crew  and,  after  talking  with  Nishikawa,  came 
back  to  the  hospital  later  in  the  afternoon.  He 
asked  Dr.  Ooi  to  send  two  of  the  men  to  Tokyo 
for  expert  consultation  and  to  write  a  "letter 
of  favor"  for  them  to  someone  at  the  University 
Hospital.  Dr.  Ooi,  though  somewhat  miffed  at 
this  "rude  request,"  consented.  The  men  he 
picked  were  Masuda,  because  of  his  heavy  burns, 
and  the  engineer,  Tadashi  Yamamoto,  because 
of  his  low  blood  count.   Dr.  Ooi  wrote: 

The  above-mentioned  persons,  during  fish- 
ing at  Bikini  Lagoon  area,  seemed  to  have 
been  taken  with  radiation  sickness  [Genbaku- 
sho]  on  March  1.  They  are  supposed  to  be 
suffering  from  atomic  cloud  of  H-bomb.  I 
humbly  beg  your  honorable  consultation.  .  .  . 

Later  Dr.  Ooi  said  that  he  had  used  the  term 
"H-bomb"  because  he  had  read  about  it  in  the 
newspapers  and  could  not  conceive  of  an  A-bomb 
hurting  anyone  so  far  away.  He  also  hoped  that 
such  a  "big  word"  might  impress  the  Tokyo  doc- 
tors who  sometimes  pay  so  little  attention  to  the 
diagnoses  of  their  rural  colleagues. 

One  member  of  the  crew  had  not  been  at  the 
hospital.  After  the  Lucky  Dragon  docked,  the 
radioman,  Aikichi  Kuboyama,  feeling  shy  about 
his  appearance,  had  gone  home  by  a  back  road 
to  avoid  meeting  anyone.  And,  instead  of  going 
in  the  front  door  as  he  usually  did,  he  went 
around  to  the  back  of  his  house.  "Okaeri-nasai 
[welcome  home],"  his  wife  called  out.  "You  must 
be  very  tired."  But  his  eldest  daughter  Miyako, 
when  she  saw  him,  said:  "Otoo-chan  [papa]  looks 
like  a  Negro.  Look  at  his  face,  how  black  he  is!" 

Kuboyama  told  his  wife  that  he  did  not  know 
exactly  what  had  happened.  "On  the  way  home 
we  encountered  something—  Gen-baku  [A-bomb], 
I  think."  She  looked  alarmed  and  he  went  on, 
trying  to  quiet  her,  "We  saw  the  blast,  but  don't 
worry— we  were  only  covered  with  ash.  I  will  be 
well  soon."  And  that  same  day  he  went  back  to 
the  Lucky  Dragon  to  repair  the  radio  equipment 
for  the  next  voyage.  It  was  not  until  the  day 
after,  when  one  of  his  crew-mates  said  he  had  a 
low  blood  count  and  had  been  told  to  rest  for 
two  months,  that  Kuboyama  presented  himself 
to  the  doctors.  They  gave  him  some  white  oint- 
ment for  his  burns  and  told  him  that  his  blood 
count  was  7,200.  "It's  just  an  ordinary  burn," 
he  told  his  wife.   "There's  no  need  to  worry." 

Masuda  and  Yamamoto,  the  next  day,  caught 
the  early-morning  train  to  Tokyo.   In  the  wash- 


room of  the  third-class  coach,  they  looked  at  their 
faces  in  the  mirror  and  were  startled  to  see  how 
dusky  and  unkempt  they  looked.  They  had  not 
shaved  and  Masuda,  in  particular,  looked  quite 
wild,  with  his  hair  seeming  to  stand  out  stiffly 
from  his  head.  He  huddled  up  in  his  seat  in  the 
car  and  kept  silent,  glancing  sidewise  occa- 
sionally to  see  if  people  were  looking  at  him. 

Tokyo  University  Hospital,  when  they  reached 
it,  looked  enormous  to  the  two  men.  Dimly  lit 
corridors  surfaced  with  a  dark  linoleum  of 
ancient  vintage  gave  it  a  depressing  atmosphere. 
Yamamoto,  acting  as  spokesman  for  the  pair, 
presented  his  letter  to  the  receptionist  and  after 
some  misunderstanding  with  the  rather  officious 
clerk,  they  were  directed  to  Dr.  Shimizu's  Depart- 
ment of  Surgery  on  the  third  floor.  Yamamoto, 
who  was  still  clutching  a  sample  of  the  ash  that 
had  fallen  on  them,  showed  it  to  the  doctor,  who 
ordered  his  assistant  to  bring  him  a  Geigef 
counter  at  once.  However,  it  turned  out  that  the 
instrument  was  in  use  and  Shimizu  turned  his 
full  attention  to  Masuda,  paying  careful  atten- 
tion to  his  ears  and  the  thick  yellowish  discharge 
that  came  from  them.  The  man  was  in  worse 
shape  than  Yamamoto,  and  Dr.  Shimizu  asked 
him:  "Will  you,  at  any  rate,  enter  the  hospital 
for  a  week?"  Sleepy-eyed  Masuda  nodded  that  he 
would  and  the  doctor,  after  giving  orders  for 
him  to  be  registered  as  an  in-patient,  left  the 
room.  It  was  after  1:00  p.m.  when  the  two  sea- 
men left  the  hospital.  Masuda  went  with  his  com- 
panion to  see  if  they  could  find  a  bite  to  eat. 
Afterward  Yamamoto  went  directly  to  the  sta- 
tion, and  caught  an  express  back  to  Yaizu. 

Later  that  same  evening,  about  seven  o'clock, 
Yamamoto  went  to  see  the  boss,  Nishikawa-5rt>2. 
He  told  him  that  the  doctor  had  said  there  was 
nothing  to  worry  about  but  had  asked  them  to 
stay  in  the  hospital  for  a  week.  "Is  it  all  right?" 
asked  the  engineer. 

"Sure,  sure,"  replied  Nishikawa. 

Thus  the  second  day  passed  after  the  arrival 
of  the  Lucky  Dragon  in  port  and  not  a  word 
about  it  had  appeared  in  the  press. 

THE     STORY    BREAKS 

HA  D  there  been  a  daily  newspaper  in 
Yaizu,  the  story  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 
might  have  broken  quickly.  As  it  was,  the  news 
was  delayed— and  then  splashed  over  page  one  of 
a  leading  Tokyo  paper.  This  is  the  story  behind 
the  story. 

Early  in  1954,  the  Yorniuri  Shimbun,  one  of 
the  three  largest  Japanese  newspapers,  featured 


50 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


a  series  of  articles  on  atomic  energy.  Keiji 
Kobayaslii,  a  nineteen-year-old  student  in  his 
second  year  at  the  Shizuoka  Prefecture  Technical 
High  School,  had  been  fascinated  by  them.  He 
felt  a  kind  of  personal  interest  in  the  Yomiuri 
newspaper,  since  a  part-time  "leg-man"  for  it 
was  living  as  a  boarder  in  his  home.  Mitsuyoshi 
Abe  often  talked  with  members  of  the  Kobayaslii 
family  about  the  value  of  getting  an  exclusive 
story.  Scoops  are  hard  to  come  by  in  Japan, 
where  the  newspapers  employ  armies  of  re- 
porters, probational  reporters,  and  part-time  leg- 
men. The  Asa  hi  Shimbun  (Morning  Sim)  alone 
employs  fifteen  hundred  reporters. 

Relatives  of  the  family  came  to  visit  the 
Kobayashis  in  the  afternoon  on  March  15,  and 
one  of  them  mentioned  what  he  had  heard  from 
men  of  the/  Lucky  Dragon.  At  dinner  that  eve- 
ning young  Kobayaslii  learned  about  it  from  his 
mother.  He  remembered  saving  newspaper  clip- 
pings about  something  that  had  happened  on 
March  1.  He  dug  through  them  and  found  an 
announcement  of  the  H-bomb  test.  Then,  think- 
ing of  his  reporter  friend,  he  urged  his  mother  to 
tell  Abe-san  as  quickly  as  possible.  Abe  was  not 
in  town,  however,  for  he  had  gone  to  the  nearby 
town  of  Shimada  to  cover  the  killing  of  a  child. 

Mrs.  Kobayaslii  placed  a  long-distance  call  to 
Abe-san  but  could  not  reach  him   until  it  was 


nearly  dark.  As  she  spilled  out  the  story  ol  the 
Lucky  Dragon,  Abe  interrupted:  "What?  Mv 
father  is  coming  to  Yai/u?  I'll  be  home  right 
away."  The  quick-witted  reporter  knew  that 
unless  he  gave  some  plausible  reason  for  hurry- 
ing away  the  other  reporters  would  get  wise  to 
his  story.  As  it  was,  they  laughed  at  Abe.  They 
knew  that  his  father,  a  Buddhist  priest  from  a 
famous  spa  about  fifty  miles  north  of  Yai/u,  had 
sent  him  money  to  buy  a  press  camera  and  that 
the  money  had  been  squandered  on  sake. 

Shortly  after  7:00  p.m.  Abe  was  in  Yai/u,  and 
by  7:28  he  called  the  Shizuoka  office  of  the 
Yomiuri  Shimbun.  Abe-san  filed  a  brief  story, 
apparently  not  fully  aware  of  its  news  value. 
He  spelled  Bikini  as  Biknik.  But  the  editor  on 
night  duty  for  the  Yomiuri  was  Yoshi  Tsujiimoto, 
the  very  man  who  edited  the  atomic  energy 
scries  which  had  so  interested  young  Kobayaslii. 
When  the  news  came  in  from  Shizuoka,  the 
editor  knew  a  big  story  was  in  the  making  and 
he  swung  into  action. 

It  happened  that  a  reporter  by  the  name  of 
Murao  was  on  duty.  He  had  been  on  a  round- 
the-world  tour  and  had  co-operated  on  the  series 
of  atomic  articles.  He  was  hurriedly  summoned. 
Tsujiimoto  barked  out  details.  A  boat  had  been 
near  Bikini  .  .  .  the  crew  had  been  covered  with 
ash  .  .  .  the  men  were  burned  .  .  .  two  crewmen 
had  come  to  Tokyo  that  day  ...  it  was  a  big  story 
...  go  to  Tokyo  University  at  once! 

Reporter  Murao  wasted  no  time.  He  picked 
up  a  police-beat  man  and  a  photographer  and 
they  raced  to  the  hospital.  When  the  Yomiuri 
car  pulled  up  in  front  of  the  hospital,  Murao's 
heart  sank— there  in  front  of  the  building  was  a 
sedan  with  the  flag  of  the  Asahi  Shimbun  at- 
tached to  the  left  front  fender.  An  optimist  at 
heart,  Murao  hoped  that  the  Asahi  reporter 
might  be  there  on  other  business.  This  he  found 
to  be  the  case.  He  asked  the  receptionist:  "Did 
patients  with  atomic  sickness  come  here  today?" 

"Yes,  they  were  here  today,"  replied  the  girl. 

Murao  was  much  relieved  and  thought  that 
his  job  would  be  an  easy  one.  But  it  turned  out 
that  these  were  patients,  from  Hiroshima.  The 
girl  knew  nothing  of  any  fishermen  suffering 
from  atomic  sickness.  The  persistent  reporter 
systematically  telephoned  each  section  of  the 
hospital.  He  got  a  lucky  break  when  he  found 
an  intern  who  recalled  seeing  a  patient  with  a 
"burned-black  face"  but  he  could  not  recall  the 
patient's  name  or  room  number.  The  nurse  in 
charge  of  night  duty  denied  that  any  patients 
from  Yai/u  had  been  there  that  day,  but  they 
cajoled  her  into  showing  them  the  list.    There 


THE  VOYAGE  OF  THE  LUCKY  DRAGON 


51 


was  the  entry:  "Sanjiro  Masuda,  29,  Yaizu, 
Shizuoka  Prefecture."  Then  she  admitted  that 
Masuda  was  in  the  hospital  and  that  Yamamoto, 
the  other  patient,  had  returned  to  Yaizu.  Masuda 
was  sleeping,  however,  and  could  not  be  dis- 
turbed. When  they  pleaded  with  her  she  sum- 
moned reinforcements— the  doctor  on  duty.  He 
was  also  adamant.  Murao  slipped  out  of  the 
room,  determined  not  to  be  put  off  by  such  resis- 
tance. He  went  from  ward  to  ward,  calling  softly, 
"Masuda-san,"  and  adding,  "man  from  Yaizu." 
At  last,  a  patient  reacted. 

"Yaizu?"  he  said.  "Yes,  there's  a  man  in  the 
next  room  who's  suffering  from  atomic  sickness." 

His  heart  pounding  like  a  hunter  who  has 
sighted  big  game,  the  reporter  slipped  around 
the  corner  and  very  quietly  tiptoed  into  Room  5. 
One  of  the  two  beds  was  occupied.  The  white 
walls  reflected  light  on  the  patient,  who  was 
curled  up  on  his  side.  His  face  was  black  and 
his  ears  were  smeared  with  white  ointment.  He 
looked  like  something  from  another  world, 
thought  Murao,  and  but  for  his  story  he  would 
have  fled.  Gathering  courage,  the  reporter  shook 
the  sleeping  man  to  wake  him.  Masuda  opened 
his  eyes  in  surprise  and  sat  up.  The  reporter  was 
astonished  at  the  sight  of  his  swollen  hands  but 
he  scribbled  down  the  story  Masuda  told  him. 

At  Yaizu,  Abe-san  had  been  ordered  to  inter- 
view the  crewmen  and  to  get  photographs  at 
once.  Now  he  desperately  regretted  having  spent 
his  father's  money  on  sake,  for  he  had  no  camera. 
He  rushed  to  the  home  of  a  friend,  a  professional 
photographer,  and  woke  him  up.  The  two  men 
then  hurried  to  the  dock  to  photograph  the 
fishing  boat  and  the  crew. 

It  was  dark  on  the  pier  and  they  found  the 
boat  tied  up,  looking  rather  forlorn  and  deserted. 
The  photographer  took  several  flash-bulb  shots 
and  Abe-san  hailed  the  ship.  A  lone  sailor  came 
on  deck  and  told  them  that  all  the  others  were 
in  town.  Some  had  gone  home,  some  were  drink- 
ing, and  the  others— well,  they  were  young  and 
had  been  at  sea  for  a  long  time.  The  reporter 
knew  the  drinking  spots  in  town  all  too  well, 
and  he  soon  found  some  of  the  dark-faced  crew. 
They  were  reluctant  to  talk,  however,  for  they 
feared  that  they  would  be  summoned  before 
authorities.  Abe-san  hunted  up  Yamamoto  and 
woke  him  from  a  sound  sleep.  He  also  routed 
Dr.  Ooi  from  bed  and  questioned  him  about  the 
fishermen. 

At  the  night  desk  of  the  Yomiuri  they  knew 
they  had  a  big  story— but  would  it  hold?  If  they 
broke  it  in  an  early  edition,  say,  the  one  going  to 
cities  in  western  Japan,  then  the  Asahi  and  the 


Mainichi,  their  two  rivals,  would  pirate  the  story 
and  run  it  in  tomorrow's  Tokyo  editions.  It  was 
a  touch-and-go  decision  for  the  Yomiuri.  The 
editor  decided  to  hold  for  the  ninth  edition  and 
gamble  on  a  real  scoop. 

Successive  editions  of  the  Yomiuri  rolled  off 
the  presses  without  a  mention  of  the  Lucky 
Dragon.  Each  rival  edition  of  the  Asahi  and  the 
Mainichi  was  rushed  to  the  Yomiuri  office  as  fast 
as  it  could  be  snatched  up.  Each  time  a  new 
edition  hit  the  desk,  the  editor  and  his  staff 
breathed  a  sigh  of  relief.  Their  big  story  was 
still  safe. 

On  the  morning  of  Tuesday,  March  16,  when 
rival  papers  could  no  longer  change  their 
morning  editions,  the  Yomiuri  spread  its  head- 
line across  the  front  page: 

JAPANESE    FISHERMEN    ENCOUNTERED 
ATOMIC  BOMB  TEST  AT  BIKINI 

23  Men  Suffering  From  Atomic  Disease 

One  Diagnosed  Serious  by  Tokyo 

University  Hospital 

H-BOMB? 

The  story  was  out  at  last. 

The  morning  of  March  16,  some  of  the  seamen 
from  the  Lucky  Dragon  knocked  off  from  their 
chores  aboard  ship  and  sauntered  down  the 
pier  for  a  walk.  They  observed  a  small  crowd  of 
people  gathered  around  an  electric  lamp  pole, 
reading  a  newspaper  tacked  up  on  it.  Edging 
in  closer  the  crewmen  from  the  Lucky  Dragon 
were  surprised  to  see  that  they  were  in  the  head- 
lines. They  had  no  idea  that  what  happened  to 
them  on  March  1  would  be  of  such  significance. 

If  they  had  any  doubts  these  were  soon  settled 
by  the  swarm  of  reporters,  photographers,  tele- 
vision cameramen,  and  their  assistants  who 
descended  upon  the  pier.  The  decks  of  the 
Lucky  Dragon  were  soon  crowded  to  overflowing. 

The  first  scientist  to  arrive  at  the  scene  was 


52 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


Professor  Takanobu  Shiokawa  from  Shizuoka. 
He  had  been  at  his  laboratory  that  morning  in 
the  Chemistry  Department  of  the  University  of 
Shizuoka  when  he  received  a  call  from  the  Pre- 
fectural  Sanitary  Division.  He  was  given  a  few 
brief  details,  supplementing  those  lie  had  read 
in  the  newspaper,  and  was  asked  to  go  to  Yaizu 
and  check  for  radioactivity. 

Although  the  University  of  Shizuoka  is  not 
very  pretentious,  it  does  have  a  well-staffed 
science  department  equipped  with  modern  de- 
vices for  the  measurement  of  radioactivity.  Dr. 
Shiokawa  and  his  assistant  hurriedly  gathered 
up  some  radiation  meters  and  other  instruments 
and  then,  together  with  a  high  pretectural  official, 
they  drove  over  the  winding  road  to  Yaizu.  After 
meeting  with  city  officials  they  drove  directly  to 
the  hospital  and  consulted  with  Dr.  Ooi.  Two 
crewmen  from  the  Lucky  Dragon  were  already  at 
the  hospital  and,  at  Dr.  Ooi's  request,  the 
scientist  inspected  the  men  for  traces  of  radio- 
activity. 

Dr.  Shiokawa  flipped  the  "ON"  switch  of  the 
Geiger  counter  and  waited  lor  a  moment  for 
the  instrument  to  warm  up.  When  it  was  operat- 
ing properly,  Dr.  Shiokawa  brought  it  near  one 
of  the  crewmen.  The  instrument  dial  wavered 
as  he  brought  the  counter  closer  to  the  sailor, 
who  by  this  time  had  taken  a  close  interest  in 
what  was  going  on.  Being  so  slight  in  stature, 
the  professor  stood  on  tiptoe  and  brought  the 
counter  near  the  crewman's  head.  The  needle 
swung  over  toward  the  end  of  the  scale!  The 
man  was  radioactive! 

If  the  men  themselves  were  radioactive,  what 
must  the  boat  be  like?  Hurrying  to  the  dock,  the 
survey  party  found  the  Lucky  Dragon  tied  up 
with  fishing  boats  moored  on  either  side.  It  was 
crawling  with  newsmen,  photographing  the  boat 
and  the  crew  from  every  angle.   Small  clusters  of 


reporters  crowded  around  members  ol  die  crew, 

sicking  additional  news  angles.  There  was  a 
great  hubbub,  added  to  by  the  din  and  com- 
motion of  carpenters  who  were  making  some 
repairs.  When  they  were  still  a  hundred  feet 
from  the  boat,  Dr.  Shiokawa's  sensitive  Geiger 
countei  stalled  clicking  ai  an  accelerated  beat. 
The  Lucky  Dragon  was  indeed  radioactive! 

Before  going  aboard.  Dr.  Shiokawa  carefully 
checked  a  little  instrumenl  about  the  size  ol  a 
fountain  pen.  Il  was  a  pocket  meter  lor  adding 
up  the  amount  of  radiation  lie  would  receive 
aboard  the  boat.  Then  he  (limbed  aboard, 
wedging  his  slender  body  between  the  massed 
humanity  on  deck.  He  was  astonished  at  the 
way  the  survey  instrument  needle  flipped  over  to 
the  far  side  ol  the  scale.  Never  before  had  lie 
encountered  radioactivity  like  this. 

The  technical  measurement  ol  radiation  in- 
volves a  considerable  knowledge  of  physics,  but 
it  (an  be  understood  quite  easily  on  a  compara- 
tive scale.  We  can  set  up  a  yardstick,  putting  at 
the  top  the  amount  ol  radiation  (in  number  of 
roentgens)  required  to  produce  death  in  an  indi- 
vidual, il  exposed  all  over  the  body.  In  general, 
the  death  range  is  from  300  to  700  roentgens, 
although  most  people  would  average  out  in  the 
400  to  500  bracket.  The  least  amount  of  radia- 
tion which  produces  an  immediately  detectable 
effect  in  the  human  body  is  about  25  roentgens. 

It  should  be  emphasized  that  these  figures  are 
lor  total  doses.  The  readings  which  Dr.  Shiokawa 
recorded  on  the  decks  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 
were  of  the  dose  rate— that  is,  the  amount  of 
radiation  per  hour.  As  he  walked  around  the 
crowded  decks,  he  found  that  the  main  deck 
gave  a  reading  of  about  25  millirqentgens  per 
hour.  Working  forward  to  the  prow  of  the  ship, 
he  found  il  was  half  that  value  and,  picking  his 
way  to  the  stern,  he  observed  it  was  several  times 
more  radioactive.  He  ducked  into  the  rear  crew 
compartment,  and  found  that  holding  the  Geiger 
counter  up  to  the  ceiling  gave  a  reading  of  one- 
tenth  roentgen  per  hour.  Lowering  it  down  to 
the  bunk,  he  noted  that  the  needle  dropped 
down  on  the  scale  and  went  lower  as  he  shifted 
the  instrument  to  the  lower  bunk.  It  was  obvious 
that  the  main  source  of  the  radioactivity  was  com- 
ing from  above,  so  he  climbed  up  on  the  roof  of 
the  crew  space  and  found  that  the  instrument 
gave  a  considerably  higher  reading.  Coils  of 
rope  and  buoys  were  stacked  on  the  rool  and 
the  scientist  soon  discovered  that  these  were 
extremely  radioactive.  All  during  their  long 
voyage  home  the  men  in  the  after  cabin  had  been 
sleeping   under  an  intense  source  of  radiation. 


THE  VOYAGE  OF  THE  LUCKY  DRAGON 


53 


The  news  that  they  were  radioactive  hit  the 
seamen  slowly.  True,  they  were  horrified  when 
the  Geiger  counters  spluttered  and  the  instru- 
ments' needles  flipped  across  the  scale.  Looking 
at  the  scientists  and  seeing  their  surprise,  the 
crewmen  knew  that  something  most  unusual  was 
happening.  But  it  was  as  though  they  had  been 
told  they  had  a  rare  and  strange  disease;  they 
did  not  really  react  until  others  around  them 
reacted. 

An  official  of  the  Shizuoka  Prefecture  told 
some  of  the  crewmen:  "As  a  result  of  investiga- 
tions with  the  Geiger  counter,  we  find  that  your 
hair,  nails,  and  the  hull  of  the  ship  have  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  radiation.  If  left  alone  as  it 
is,  it  will  surely  kill  you.  We  are  of  the  opinion 
that  you  should  pack  your  clothes  and  have 
them  sent  to  the  Prefecture.  We  are  also  of  the 
opinion  that  you  should  leave  the  ship."  Five 
of  the  crewmen  agreed  to  spend  the  night  at  the 
hospital. 

Kuboyama,  for  example,  took  the  news  rather 
stoically.  He  went  back  to  work  on  his  radio 
equipment  still  under  the  conviction  that  the 
ship  would  put  out  on  a  new  voyage  soon.  That 
night,  when  he  went  home  and  told  his  wife 
about  the  radioactivity,  she  looked  at  him 
blankly  as  though  she  had  not  heard  a  word  he 
said.  Then  he  mentioned  the  A-bomb  and 
Hiroshima.  She  burst  into  tears  and  clung  to 
him.  The  radioman  tried  to  comfort  her.  "Don't 
worry,  darling,  it  will  take  more  time  to  see  the 
results.  You  go  to  bed  and  sleep.  We  are  going 
to  the  Yaizu  North  Hospital  tomorrow." 

The  three  children  were  already  asleep.  His 
wife  obediently  went  to  bed  and  Kuboyama 
stayed  up  for  a  while  wondering  What  was  in 
store  for  him.  Later  he  was  to  write:  "From  this 
day  on,  unhappiness  of  our  family  began." 

THE     CRISIS     MOUNTS 

YAIZU  was  not  the  only  Japanese  city  to 
become  excited  about  radioactivity.  At 
the  huge  industrial  center  of  Osaka,  Yashushi 
Nishiwaki,  a  young  biophysics  professor  at  the 
city  university  who  had  read  about  the  Lucky 
Dragon  in  Yomiuri,  called  the  city  health  office 
to  see  if  any  fish  from  Yaizu  had  been  shipped 
there.  Soon  he  was  summoned  to  the  Osaka  cen- 
tral market  where  he  found  a  tuna,  to  his  aston- 
ishment, that  rattled  his  Geiger  counter  at  60,000 
counts  per  minute.  City  officials,  discovering 
from  the  scales  and  paper  wrappings  that  con- 
taminated fish  had  already  been  eaten  by  about 
a  hundred  people,  pleaded  with  him  for  advice. 


Fear  swept  through  the  city  when  the  evening- 
papers  carried  the  story.  The  reaction  was  im- 
mediate and  drastic— people  stopped  buying  fish. 

The  problem  for  the  young  biophysicist  was 
similar  to  that  of  the  Tokyo  doctors  who  were 
examining  Masuda  and  Yamamoto.  They  could 
not  tell  how  badly  the  men  had  been  hurt,  and 
Nishiwaki  could  not  set  a  level  of  "permissible" 
contamination  for  fish,  without  knowing  how 
strong  the  source  of  original  radiation  had  been. 
Even  after  he  had  made  a  trip  to  Yaizu  to  inspect 
the  ship  and  its  crew  he  knew  days  would  pass 
before  his  analysis  of  the  ash  would  be  com- 
pleted. Nishiwaki  therefore  took  the  time  to 
write  an  open  letter  to  the  U.  S.  Atomic  Energy 
Commission,  asking  that  Japanese  scientists  be 
told  what  elements  had  been  in  the  H-bomb. 
He  gave  it  to  the  representative  of  an  American 
press  service,  thinking  that  would  be  the  fastest 
way  to  reach  the  United  States. 

But  the  letter  was  never  transmitted.  It  was 
blocked  by  the  chief  of  the  wire  service's  Tokyo 
bureau.  Later  Nishiwaki  learned  that  the  deci- 
sion had  been  made  on  the  grounds  that  he  was 
"an  alarmist  who  was  obviously  seeking  pub- 
licity." When  the  scientist  sought  out  the  bureau 
chief  later  that  year  he  was  dismayed  to  find  that 
the  latter  had  not  changed  his  mind.  The  man 
told  him  that  he  had  friends  in  the  AEC  who 
had  assured  him  the  fish  were  not  contaminated. 
Pointing  to  his  wrist-watch  radium  dial,  he  said 
Nishiwaki  probably  thought  that  was  dangerous 
too.  This  attitude  on  the  part  of  some  Amer- 
icans puzzled  and  irritated  and  eventually 
alienated  Japanese  scientists  and  laymen  alike. 
The  incident  marked  the  beginning  of  a  wide 
and  unnecessary  rift  between  the  two  nations. 

The  doctors  who  were  treating  Masuda  and 
Yamamoto  in  Tokyo,  and  a  team  from  the  same 
hospital  that  had  now  examined  the  men  in 
Yaizu  were  also  fighting  against  time  to  learn 
the  contents  of  the  ash.  In  handling  victims  of 
radiation,  they  could  draw  on  the  wealth  of 
medical  information  gained  by  a  systematic 
study  of  the  survivors  of  Hiroshima  and  Naga- 
saki. This  had  been  carried  out  by  the  Atomic 
Bomb  Casualty  Commission,  a  co-operative  re- 
search facility  that  had  been  established  at 
Hiroshima,  where  thousands  of  individuals  had 
been  carefully  examined  and  re-examined.  But 
what  confused  the  situation  now  was  the  pres- 
ence of  residual  radioactivity.  Even  after  hair- 
cuts, nail-clippings,  and  a  thorough  scrubbing, 
the  fishermen  retained  some  radioactivity  on 
their  skin.  This  was  something  with  which  the 
Japanese   doctors  had   no  practical   experience, 


54 


HARPERS     MAGAZINE 


and  they  were  in  the  dark  about  how  deep- 
seated  the  injury  to  the  men  might  be. 

Officials  of  the  University  of  Tokyo  had  re- 
quested assistance  from  the  Atomic  Bomb  Cas- 
ualty Commission  and  in  response,  Dr.  John 
Morton,  its  white-haired  director,  arrived  in 
Tokyo  on  March  18.  He  visited  the  two  patients, 
Masuda  and  Yamamoto,  at  the  university  hos- 
pital and  discussed  their  condition  with  the 
attending  physicians.  He  assured  the  Japanese 
doctors  that  the  United  States  would  be  ready  to 
assist  and  offered  to  have  antibiotics  delivered  to 
the  hospital.  Before  leaving  for  Yaizu,  Dr.  Mor- 
ton stated  that  he  had  found  the  fishermen  "in 
better  shape  than  I  had  expected"  and  that  the 
twenty-three  fishermen  would  recover  "in  two  or 
three  weeks,  a  month  at  most." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Senator  John  Pastore 
of  Rhode  Island  passed  through  Tokyo  on  a  brief 
visit  and  presumably  was  briefed  by  authorities 
there  on  the  condition  of  the  Lucky  Dragon  crew. 
Senator  Pastore,  a  member  of  the  Joint  Congres- 
sional Committee  on  Atomic  Energy,  returned  to 
the  United  States  and  gave  an  interview  to  the 
press  in  which  he  made  very  optimistic  state- 
ments about  the  fishermen's  recovery.  This  was 
but  one  of  a  series  of  semi-official  opinions  voiced 
in  America  which  aggravated  the  delicate  rela- 
tions between  Americans  and  Japanese  in  Japan. 

News  from  America  continued  to  be  featured 
in  the  Japanese  press.  For  the  first  time  semi- 
official information  about  the  huge  explosion 
came  out  into  the  open.  Representative  James 
Van  Zandt,  a  Republican  Congressman  from 
Pennsylvania  and  a  member  of  the  Joint  Com- 
mittee, stated  that  the  March  1  H-bomb  ex- 
plosion had  equaled  the  blast  of  twelve  to  four- 
teen million  tons  of  TNT.  The  new  Bikini 
bond)  was  of  incredible  destructiveness.  No  won- 
der, then,  that  leading  Japanese  newspapers  ran 
editorials  urging  that  the  danger  area  around 
the  Eniwetok  Proving  Grounds  be  enlarged;  and 
the  U.  S.  government  promptly  issued  a  notice 
doing  precisely  this.  The  new  danger  area  en- 
compassed about  400,000  square  miles  of  terri- 
tory, or  roughly  eight  times  the  area  formed  by 
the  previously  designated  zone. 

On  March  19  the  Maritime  Safety  Board  in 
Japan  announced  the  new  limits.  All  boats  fish- 
ing in  this  area,  or  taking  passage  through  it, 
were  required  to  put  in  at  five  designated  ports 
and  be  inspected  for  radioactivity.  The  ports 
specified  were  Shiogama,  Shimizu  on  the  island 
of  Shikoku,  Yaizu,  Tokyo,  and  Misaki,  the  great 
tuna  center  near  Tokyo. 

Establishing  the  official  inspection  stations  was 


a  step  which  the  Japanese  government  took  to 
stem  the  rising  hysteria  over  the  contamination 
of  the  fish  supply.  There  was  no  doubt  that 
something  drastic  had  to  be  done  to  assure  the 
Japanese  people  that  the)  were  not  being 
poisoned.  Fish-dealers  were  having  a  hard  time 
convincing  customers  that  their  wares  were  not 
radioactive.  Some  shops  displayed  posters  read- 
ing:    "WE    DO    NOT    SELL    RADIO  \<   ll\i      FISH,"    but 

w.u\  purchasers  shied  away.  The  great  port  of 
Misaki  found  itself  with  warehouses  bulging  with 
/.">()  tons  of  tuna. 

The  Misaki  market  was  closed  on  March  19, 
precipitating  a  panic  among  the  fish  dealers.  The 
hysteria  spread  to  ncarln  Yokohama  and  then  to 
Tokyo  itself.  The  great  Tokyo  Central  Whole- 
sale Market  closed  lor  the  fust  time  since  the 
cholera  epidemic  of  1935.  Driven  to  desperation, 
some  merchants  circulated  handbills,  even  rent- 
ing helicopters  to  drop  them  from  the  sky:  "Fat 
Misaki  tuna  and  keep  away   from  radiation 

DANGER." 

None  ol  these  measures  worked  very  well. 
When  it  became  known  that  fish  had  been 
banned  from  the  Emperor's  diet,  people  became 
even  more  worried.  Prices  plummeted  to  still 
lower  depths  and  some  fish  dealers  were  forced 
into  bankruptcy. 

is  it  America's  fault? 

PUBLIC  resentment  over  the  Bikini  acci- 
dent spread  throughout  Japan  and  news- 
papers ran  editorials  highly  critical  of  the  United 
States.  They  criticized  Dr.  Morton  for  failing  to 
treat  the  Yaizu  fishermen  (despite  the  illegality 
of  such  treatment  by  an  American  doctor).  They 
expressed  fear  that  the  patients  would  be  used  as 
"guinea  pigs,"  and  they  demanded  reparation 
for  the  damages  incurred.  Ambassador  John  M. 
Allison  sought  to  take  some  of  the  sting  out  of 
the  criticisms  by  issuing  a  press  release  on  March 
19,  in  which  he  said  that  he  was  "authorized  to 
make  clear  that  the  U.  S.  is  prepared  to  take 
such  steps  as  may  be  necessary  to  insure  fair  and 
just  compensation  if  the  facts  so  warrant." 

//  the  facts  so  warrant:  what  did  this  mean? 
Was  it  merely  diplomatic  pussyfooting?  Or  did 
it  mean  that  there  was  doubt  about  the  injuries? 

A  U.  S.  Congressman,  Melvin  Price  from  Illi- 
nois, commented  that  the  presence  of  the  Jap- 
anese fishing  boat  so  close  to  the  blast  indicated 
that  a  Soviet  submarine  could  have  come  even 
closer.  At  this  point,  Representative  W.  Sterling 
Cole,  chairman  of  the  Joint  Atomic  Committee, 
was   interpreted   in   the  Japanese   press   as   sug- 


THE  VOYAGE  OF  THE  LUCKY  DRAGON 


55 


gesting  that  the  Lucky  Dragon  may  have  been 
on  a  spying  mission.  This  suggestion  infuriated 
the  Japanese. 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Merrill  Eisenbud,  director  of 
the  AEC's  Health  and  Safety  Laboratory,  had 
arrived  at  Tokyo's  Haneda  Airport  and  been 
whisked  away  in  an  Embassy  sedan  before  cor- 
respondents could  question  him.  Eisenbud  was 
making  a  hurried  flight  to  Japan  in  order  to 
check  on  the  levels  of  radioactivity  and  to  see 
what  assistance  his  laboratory  could  render  for 
the  crewmen.  A  short  time  later  this  American 
expert  on  fall-out  flew  to  Yaizu  and  lugged  an 
armful  of  instruments  aboard  the  Lucky  Dragon. 
The  jaunty  AEC  expert  disdained  gloves,  mask, 
or  protective  clothing  and  rather  horrified  some 
of  the  Japanese  scientists  by  his  nonchalance. 
At  the  hospital  Eisenbud  was  given  a  cool  recep- 
tion by  the  Japanese  doctors,  who  made  a  point 
of  emphasizing  that  he  had  neither  a  Ph.D.  nor 
an  M.D.  degree.  It  was  quite  evident  that  a 
distinct  note  of  hostility  had  arisen  between  the 
Americans  and  Japanese. 

The  condition  of  the  fishermen  was  still  ob- 
scured by  uncertainty  about  the  actual  dose  of 
radiation  they  had  received.  When  Dr.  Morton 
made  his  optimistic  prediction,  he  had  examined 
only  two  of  the  fishermen  and  he  could  not  have 
received  any  reliable  estimate  of  the  dose. 
Furthermore,  there  was  no  precedent  in  medical 
science  for  evaluating  the  impact  of  radiation 
which  penetrated  the  whole  body,  and  at  the 
time  there  was  no  estimate  of  the  amount  of 
radioactive  material  which  the  men  might  have 
swallowed  or  breathed  in. 

At  Yaizu  the  fishermen  were  undergoing  many 
new  experiences.  Few  of  them  had  ever  been  to 
a  hospital  in  their  lives,  so  many  routine  medical 
procedures  made  a  deep  impression  upon  them. 
Misaki,  the  wheelman,  given  a  blood  transfusion, 
was  overwhelmed  by  the  sight  of  so  much  blood. 
He  thought:  If  I  need  so  much  blood,  then  my 
life  will  not  last  very  long. 

Hearing  the  many  fearful  stories  about  the 
effects  of  radioactivity,  the  crewmen  became  so 
worried  about  what  might  happen  to  them  that 
they  asked  the  doctors  to  stay  in  the  room  with 
them  at  night.  The  doctors  also  talked  over  with 
them  the  advisability  of  transferring  to  the 
Tokyo  hospitals,  where  there  would  be  better 
facilities.  This  proposal  met  with  a  mixed  re- 
action. Some  of  the  crew  were  willing  to  go  to 
Tokyo,  others  were  afraid.  The  thought  of  being 
transported  in  a  U.  S.  military  plane  terrified 
the  few  who  had  heard  wild  rumors  that  they 
would  be  flown  away  to  some  military  base. 


Presumably,  the  big  factor  in  finally  persuad- 
ing them  to  transfer  to  Tokyo  was  the  general 
decline  in  their  physical  condition.  Initially, 
blood  counts  did  not  show  a  very  abnormal 
white  cell  count,  but  this  changed  gradually  and 
kept  slipping  lower  during  the  second,  week  at 
Yaizu.  Then,  too,  loss  of  hair  was  noted  in 
almost  all  the  crewmen.  The  sailors  realized  that 
they  were  not  going  to  be  released  from  the 
hospital  very  soon  and  they  finally  agreed  to  go 
to  Tokyo. 

A  big  C-54  military  air  transport  was  flown  to 
Shizuoka  and  friends  of  the  fishermen  gathered 
at  the  airport  to  see  them  off.  Some  of  the  well- 
wishers  could  scarcely  conceal  their  fear  that 
their  friends  would  be  flown  to  a  U.  S.  possession 
and  never  return. 

For  most  of  the  crewmen  it  was  their  first 
plane  ride.  Kuboyama  was  much  interested  in 
the  trip  and  struck  up  an  acquaintance  with  one 
of  the  American  officers  aboard,  who  told  him: 
"It  is  America's  great  fault  that  you  are  all  like 
this,"  adding  "Gomen-na-sai.  [Please  forgive  us.]" 
Kuboyama  said  that  he  would  be  glad  to  hear 
such  words  of  sympathy  even  if  they  were  not  the 
truth.  He  felt  that  the  United  States,  as  the 
victor  in  the  last  war,  might  well  take  the  view 
that  the  Japanese  were  a  beaten  nation,  and  say, 
"How  dare  you  make  so  much  noise  about  being 
guinea  pigs  for  one  or  two  H-bombs!" 

[The  final  installment  of  "The  Voyage  of  the 
Lucky  Dragon"  will  appear  next  month.'] 


Charles  B.  Seib  and  Alan  L.  Otten 


the  Case  of  the 

FURIOUS  CHILDREN 


At  the  National  Institutes  of  Health  Center 

in  Bethesda,  six  boys  with  records  of 

juvenile  violence  are  serving  as  subjects 

for  one  of  the  most  exhaustive  studies  of 

human  behavior  ever  attempted. 

TH  E  "acting-out"  child,  to  use  the  psychia- 
trists' term,  is  an  island  of  wild  emotion 
in  a  hostile  world.  He  has  no  controls,  no  sense 
of  the  future.  Every  impulse,  however  fantastic, 
must  be  gratified  immediately  and  violently.  Al- 
though he  has  not  yet  crossed  the  border  into 
schizophrenia  or  some  other  serious  psychosis, 
he  is  profoundly  disturbed.  Two  dark  roads 
stretch  before  him— disastrous  mental  illness  or 
delinquency  blending  into  adult  crime. 

Trying  to  handle  an  acting-out  child  is  like 
trying  to  handle  a  lit  string  of  firecrackers.  The 
question  is  not  whether  there  will  be  an  explo- 
sion, but  when  and  how  often.  To  have  to  care 
for  a  group  of  such  children— let  alone  help  or 
study  them— is  a  terrifying  prospect.  Yet  for 
nearly  four  years,  six  of  these  youngsters,  assem- 
bled by  the  federal  government,  have  been  the 
subjects  of  one  of  the  most  exhaustive  investiga- 
tions of  human  behavior  ever  attempted. 

The  boys  were  selected  on  the  basis  of  the 
consistent  ferocity  of  their  behavior,  as  docu- 
mented in  the  records  of  courts,  schools,  and 
social  agencies.  Though  they  were  only  eight 
to  ten  years  old  at  the  time  they  became  charges 
of  the  government,  their  case  histories  were  long 
and  strikingly  similar:  classroom  difficulties  rang- 
ing from  inability  to  learn  to  violent  tantrums, 
truancy,  stealing,  fire-setting,  assaults— often 
fiendish  in  their  ingenuity— on  other  children, 
sexual  misbehavior,  and  so  on.  Most  of  the  boys 
came  from  broken  homes  and  had  been  given  up 


as  hopeless  by  relatives,  teachers,  and  others  who 
tried  to  live  with  them. 

In  the  spring  of  1954  they  were  brought  to  a 
locked  ward  in  the  National  Institutes  of  Health 
Clinical  Center  in  Bethesda,  Maryland,  just  out- 
side of  Washington,  where  a  huge  staff  of  psy- 
chiatrists, therapists,  teachers,  counselors,  and 
nurses  was  waiting  for  them.  There  they  slowly 
learned  the  meaning  of  love,  compassion,  accept- 
ance, and  self-control.  And  there,  from  the 
moment  of  their  arrival,  their  actions,  reactions, 
words— every  observable  element  of  their  exist- 
ence—were exhaustively  recorded.  While  they 
played,  studied,  ate,  underwent  treatment,  even 
as  they  slept,  the  documentation  piled  up  at  the 
rate  of  a  good-sized  novel  every  two  weeks.  It  is 
still  going  on,  and  when  completed  it  will  con- 
stitute one  of  the  most  complete  records  ever 
compiled  on  the  lives,  conscious  and  unconscious, 
ol  a  group  of  human  beings. 

When  this  great  mass  of  information  is 
analyzed  and  interpreted,  society  will  have  valu- 
able new  knowledge  about  the  behavior  of  all 
children— normal  as  well  as  disturbed.  For 
parents  and  professionals  there  will  be  new  in- 
sights to  the  control  and  channeling  of  childhood 
aggressions,  detecting  and  handling  the  first  signs 
of  juvenile  delinquency,  providing  the  surround- 
ings likely  to  bring  the  child's  happiest  develop- 
ment. 

And  for  the  boys,  who  are  unknowingly  sup- 
plying all  this  information,  there  is  every  hope 
that  eventually  they  will  be  able  to  take  their 
places  in  society. 

Guiding  genius  of  the  project  is  Vienna-born 
Dr.  Fritz  Redl,  who  has  spent  most  of  his  fifty- 
five  years  working  with  disturbed  children.  A 
man  ol  deep  compassion  and  boundless  enthusi- 
asm, he  is  half  of  a  unique  partnership  in  which 
the  government  provides  the  facilities  and  the 
money— unofficially  estimated  at  $250,000  a  year 


THE     CASE     OF     THE     FURIOUS     CHILDREN 


57 


or  more— and  he  provides  the  know-how,  the 
leadership,  and— on  occasion— the  daring. 

Redl  laid  the  groundwork  for  the  present 
project  in  "Pioneer  House,"  a  group  therapy 
home  for  wayward  boys  he  operated  in  Detroit 
some  ten  years  ago.  However,  shortages  of 
money,  staff,  and  facilities  kept  that  project  and 
the  others  he  has  conducted  in  Austria  and 
this  country  from  approaching  the  scope  of 
today's  operation. 

Dr.  Redl  came  to  NIH  in  August  1953,  when 
federal  officials  decided  that  the  new,  500-bed 
Clinical  Center  should  include  a  project  on  the 
mental  health  of  children  in  its  research  pro- 
gram. They  invited  him,  as  a  visiting  scientist, 
to  fill  the  gap,  and  he  immediately  set  about 
devising  the  project  which  would  permit  him  to 
explore  under  highly  controlled  conditions  some 
of  the  pathways  he  had  glimpsed  at  Pioneer 
House.  In  1955,  he  formally  entered  govern- 
ment service  and  his  present  title  is  Chief  of  the 
Child  Research  Branch  of  the  National  Institute 
of  Mental  Health. 

THE    WALLED    CAMP 

WHEN  the  six  acting-out  boys  arrived 
at  the  Center,  half  of  the  fourth  floor 
had  been  converted  into  a  sort  of  tile-walled 
boys'  camp. 

The  setup  had  been  given  a  thorough  testing. 
First,  several  groups  of  normal  youngsters  re- 
cruited in  the  neighborhood  spent  two-week 
"vacations"  in  the  ward.  Their  reactions  pro- 
vided essential  information  on  whether  the 
arrangement— admittedly  less  than  ideal— was 
satisfactory  for  child  living.  Also,  during  their 
stays  the  staff  worked  into  its  complicated 
twenty-four-hour  routine  and  obtained  some 
valuable  information  on  how  normal  children 
responded  to  situations  in  which  the  eventual 
long-term  residents  would  find  themselves.  Re- 
assuringly, some  of  the  visitors  objected  strenu- 
ously to  leaving  when  their  two-week  terms 
were  up. 

They  were  followed  by  two  groups  of  boys 
with  emotional  disturbances  similar  to  those  of 
the  boys  selected  for  the  long-term  project.  Each 
of  these  groups  stayed  for  some  months,  serving 
as  the  basis  for  a  number  of  short-term  research 
projects.  When  the  six  youngsters  now  in  the 
project  were  brought  in,  the  decision  was  that 
they  would  be  kept  until  they  no  longer  needed 
residential   treatment. 

The  six  boys  were  tense,  tough,  suspicious. 
Two   were   Negroes;    the   rest   white.    All   were 


physically  fit  and  had  normal  or  better  IOs. 
Although  they  had  been  recruited  through 
court  and  welfare  agencies,  they  came  with  the 
permission  of  whatever  family  they  had,  and 
with  the  understanding  that  they  would  stay 
until  they  were  well. 

The  staff  assembled  to  care  for  and  study 
them  at  times  numbered  as  high  as  forty,  and 
its  make-up  varied  according  to  the  boys'  needs 
and  the  individual  research  projects  being  car- 
ried on  within  the  major  project.  Typically, 
there  was  Redl,  the  director;  a  ward  psychiatrist, 
two  consulting  psychiatrists,  and  perhaps  a  re- 
search psychiatrist;  three  psychotherapists;  one 
half-time  and  two  full-time  teachers;  an  occupa- 
tional therapist,  a  group  worker,  a  case  worker, 
and  fifteen  to  twenty  counselors,  nurses,  and 
aides.  Because  the  project  was  unique,  Dr.  Redl 
from  the  start  conducted  a  busy  program  of  staff 
seminars  and  conferences  and  issued  a  steady 
stream  of  multigraphed  instructions,  hints, 
caveats,  admonitions,  and  accolades. 

Much  of  his  instruction,  especially  in  the  early 
days,  concerned  the  difficult  task  of  giving  the 
affection  the  boys  sorely  needed  but  rejected 
with  fierce  determination.  This  could  not  be 
sentimental  or  all-permissive;  such  an  approach 
would  have  been  hopeless  and  accepted  by  the 
boys  only  as  a  means  of  taking  over.  Instead,  the 
line  was:  "We're  on  your  side  even  when  you  do 
things  we  don't  like.  We're  not  going  to  let  you 
hurt  us  or  yourselves,  but  we're  not  going  to 
hold  your  actions  against  you  either.  You  don't 
have  to  perform  to  a  standard  or  make  promises 
here." 

For  the  acting-out  boys  this  was  something 
new.  Always  before  in  their  experience  love  and 
affection  had  been  offered  only  at  the  price  of 
improved  performance— the  kept  promise  to 
"never  do  it  again."  And  they  knew  from  bitter 
experience  that  they  could  not  pay  that  price. 
So  it  was  a  long,  painful  process  to  provide  the 
base  of  confidence  between  staff  and  boys  from 
which  the  boys  could  build  what  Redl  calls  the 
"controls  from  within,"  controls  that  would  leash 
their  rampant  aggression. 

One  of  the  basic  problems  was  how  to  cope 
with  the  terrible  tantrums  to  which  acting-out 
children  are  given.  These  are  not  the  brief  fits 
of  anger  and  heel-kicking  seen  in  normal  chil- 
dren. They  are  prolonged— sometimes  for  an 
hour  or  more— and  of  unmitigated  violence.  The 
only  limiting  factors  are  the  physical  strength  of 
the  child  and  his  ability  to  express  hatred. 

The  staff  developed  a  technique  of  holding  a 
boy  during  a  tantrum— pinning  his  arms,  keeping, 


58 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


his  feel  iiihIm  control,  and  staying  oul  oi  range 
of  his  teeth— that  avoided  as  fai  as  possible  the 
impression  thai  he  was  being  disciplined.  Dur- 
ing the  holding,  he  was  constantly  told  thai  this 
was  done  onl)  so  he  wouldn't  hurt  somebody 
and  thai  he'd  be  feeling  bettei   soon. 

Nevertheless,  the  boys  sometimes  managed  to 
gel  in  a  good  nip  or  kick,  and  more  than  one 
counseloi  made  a  trip  to  the  Center's  first-aid 
loom.  Violence  flared  among  the  boys  them- 
selves, too,  and  there  was  a  complex  interplay 
among  the  six  personalities  some  leading,  some 
goading,  some  serving  as  lall  guys— thai  provided 
valuable  material  for  the  record. 

Earl)  reports  contain  such  entries  as  these: 
"Richard  became  Eurious  with  Sam,  and  attacked 
him  murderously."  "I  le  spit  in  my  [a  counselor's] 
face."  "Ili  began  wildly  destroying  things  in  the 
classroom."  Through  it  all  ran  an  obbligato  of 
vile  language,  at  which  the  boys  were  proficient. 
I  here  wei e  even  a  few  lues  set. 

I  wo  tilings  made  the  task  ol  living  with  all 
this  bearable:  the  reassuring  presence  of  Dr. 
Redl,  with  his  vasi  background  ol  information 
on  juvenile  misbehavioi  and  inexhaustible  flow 
of  ideas;  and  the  growth  of  a  deep  interest  in— 
and  even  a  devotion  to  the  boys  themselves  that 
developed  in  the  staff.  I  he  attachment  to  these 
seemingly  unlovable  veningsters  became  so  strong 
thai  stall  tensions  developed  o\ei  cue  and  treat- 
ment techniques.  Foi  example,  a  counseloi 
might  complain  thai  the  fact  that  the  psycho- 
therapist  permitted  a   bo)    to  (heat   in   a   play- 

iheiapv  session  inletlcreel  with  his,  the  coun- 
selor's, efforts  to  bring  a  semblance  of  order  and 
fair   pla\    to   <  aid   games. 

I I  was  Redl  who  resolved  the  conflicts,  some- 
times with  an  all-pull-together  pitch,  sometimes 
with  a  reminder  thai  "aftei  all,  this  is  the  mess 
we  threw  ourselves  into  because  that  is  the  only 
wav  in  .hi  ive  al  woi  kable  answers." 

\s  iIk  insi  yeai  ran  into  the  second  the  l>ovs 
began  to  be  concerned  over  the  possibility  that 
in  theil  rages  they  might  hurt  someone.  A  boy 
aboul  to  start  a  session  with  a  woman  psycho- 
therapisl  might  suggest,  "1  think  a  counseloi 
ought  to  come  with  mc  today,"  if  he  felt  there 
was  .uiv  dangei  thai  he  would  lose  control  and 
injure  the  therapist. 

"These  boys  need  a  certain  amount  of  adult 

control  and  want  it,"  Dr.  Redl  explains.  "The 
secret,  ol  course,  and  one  of  the  purposes  of  this 
whole1  project,  is  to  determine  the  proper  bal- 
ance." 

Meanwhile,  from  therapists  and  teachers  came 
the  detailed,  interpretive  reports  on  the  results 


ol  theil  d.iilv  individual  sessions  with  the  young- 
steis.  Counselors,  nurses,  and  aides  provided 
othei  logs.  I  cams  of  researchers  observed  the 
hovs  through  oneway  glass  windows  in  the 
schoolrooms  and  shops.  Radio  transmitters, 
linked  to  recording  equipment  in  an  office,  cap- 
tured on-the-spot  observations. 

Muse  notes,  carefully  guarded  from  publica- 
tion, frequently  read  like  good  lietiem,  partially, 
at  least,  because  ol  Reell's  advice  to  his  staff: 
"Describe  what  happened,"  he  told  them.  "Say 
'Johnny  got  mad,  his  face  got  all  puckered  up, 
and  he'  pie  keel  up  a  piece  ol  clay  with  a  threaten- 
ing gesture  toward  me,  but  finally  put  it  down 
and  elieln'i  throw  it.'  Don't  say,  'Johnny  had  a 
sudden  outburst  ol  aggression  but  controlled 
same,'  or  '  Johnny  seems  to  stiller  from  hvper- 
aggiessive  drives.'  " 

WHILE     THE     IRON     IS     HOT 

ON  1  of  the  most  interesting  treatment 
techniques  developed  by  Dr.  Redl  is  the 
"life-space  interview,"  which  supplements  more 
orthodox  play-therapy  sessions.  In  conventional 
psychotherapy,  therapist  and  child  meet  in  a 
private  room  where  the  therapist  plays  and  talks 
with  the  child,  watching  for  opportunities  to 
explore  in<  ielents  from  the  past  which  may  be 
contributing  n>  current  difficulties.  Ideally,  the 
child  will  transfer  past  feelings  and  attitudes  to 
the  therapist,  thus  working  them  into  the  open 
where,  with  the  help  of  the  therapist,  they  can  be 
faced.  In  practice,  however,  a  child  frequently 
refuses  even  to  enter  the  treatment  room. 

The  life-space  interview,  by  contrast,  is  a  fluid 
technique.  I'  occurs  at  the  moment  the  child  has 
difficulty— when  he  gets  into  a  fight,  when  he 
throws  a  hook  in  the  classroom.  The  idea  is  to 
catch  him  when  he's  "hot"  and  able  to  talk  freely 
about  what  he  feels.  The  person  who  talks  to 
him  may  be  a  therapist  who  happens  n>  be 
present  at  the  moment  or  some  other  staff  mem- 
ber trained   in   the  life-space  technique. 

Here  is  an  example  of  such  an  interview,  read 
recently  to  a  psychiatric  symposium  by  group 
worker  Joel  J.  Vernick: 

Albeit  [the  name  is  fictitious]  was  in  his 
room  being  held  by  two  counselors  as  a  result 
ol  being  extremely  upset  on  the  ward.  I 
entered  and  said  I  would  stay  with  him  now. 
When  he  was  released  he  struck  at  a  counselor. 
I  stepped  in  and  held  him  and  he  attempted 
to   bite  and   kick  me. 

I  said  softly  that  1  would  let  him  go  when 
he    settled    clown.     He    demanded    repeatedly 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  FURIOUS  CHILDREN 


59 


that  I  let  him  go.  However,  his  tone  of  voice 
indicated  he  was  not  ready  for  this.  He  gave 
me  one  good  solid  kick,  and  I  said  I  didn't 
want  to  be  kicked  and  would  have  to  hold 
him  on  the  floor  until  he  could  calm  down. 
When  I  had  him  on  the  floor,  he  repeated  the 
demand  for  me  to  let  go.  When  he  quieted 
down  a  little,  I  let  him  go.  He  got  up  and  I 
acted  surprised  that  he  was  angry  with  me, 
referring  to  how  I  had  just  come  into  the 
room  and  had  nothing  to  do  with  what  hap- 
pened before.  He  ceased  his  efforts  to  attack 
me  physically.  He  now  stalked  about  the 
room  looking  for  something  to  throw  at  me. 
I  noticed  there  was  much  debris  on  the  floor, 
and  bending  down  I  said  I  would  help  him 
clean  up. 

As  I  started  to  pick  up  things  he  threw  a 
basket  at  me  which  hit  me  a  glancing  blow, 
but  this  was  a  token  throwing  and  was  part  of 
his  cooling-down  process.  He  now  seemed 
more  in  control  of  his  actions  and  had  been 
able  to  achieve  some  awareness  that  he  was 
not  angry  with  me.  He  next  tapped  me  lightly 
on  the  head  with  a  nail  protruding  from  a 
board.  I  slowly  arose  and  without  saying  any- 
thing took  it  away  from  him.  He  did  not 
resist. 

All  during  this  time  I  was  wondering  out 
loud  what  was  bothering  him,  why  he  threw 
things  and  hit  me  when  he  wasn't  even  angry 
with  me.  I  also  asked  him  about  the  owner- 
ship of  things  I  picked  up  so  that  I  could 
put  them  on  the  right  dresser.  When  every- 
thing was  cleared  from  the  floor,  I  suggested 
that  we  play  cards  if  he  had  a  deck.  I  referred 
to  the  last  time  when  he  beat  me  at  cards.  He 
said  nothing,  sat  on  his  bed,  head  down, 
silent,  looking  depressed.  After  several  seconds 
of  silence,  I  commented  that  something  must 
be  bothering  him  and  I  wondered  what  it 
was. 

He  said  somewhat  tauntingly  that  he  had  a 
knife  hidden  and  nobody  would  get  it.  I 
raised  my  eyebrows,  and  said,  "Holy  smokes, 
if  you  have  a  knife  it  doesn't  do  you  any  good 
if  you  have  to  keep  it  hidden  all  the  time." 
I  went  on  to  state  the  ward  policy  about 
knives,  saying  he  could  use  a  knife  in  the 
shop.  He  said  he  was  referring  to  a  table 
knife  and  that  he  had  tricked  me  because  he 
didn't  have  a  pocket  knife.  I  made  no  reply  to 
this  and  went  on  talking  about  it  being  a 
pocket  knife.  He  said  derisively  we  wouldn't 
allow  him  to  use  it  in  the  shop.  I  smiled  and 
reassured  him  that  we  would. 

He  then  told  me  to  leave  the  room  so  he 
could  get  it  out  of  its  hiding  place,  and  I 
complied.  I  returned  when  he  called,  and  he 
was  brandishing  a  pocket  knife,  blade  open.  I 
didn't  look  at  Albert  as  I  entered,  but  only  at 


the  knife.  I  made  the  remark  that  it  was  a 
nice-looking  knife  and  at  the  same  time  I 
reached  out  my  hand  for  it.  He  immediately 
handed  it  to  me.  After  several  minutes  of 
looking  and  talking  about  it,  I  said  there  was 
time  for  us  to  go  to  the  shop  and  use  it  now. 
I  then  referred  back  to  his  brandishing  the 
knife  at  me  earlier  and  commented  that  this 
was  not  the  correct  use  of  it.  On  the  way  to 
the  shop  I  referred  to  the  rule  that  a  knife 
must  be  closed  in  transit.  He  immediately 
closed  it.  In  the  shop  he  started  to  whittle.  I 
involved  myself  in  this  activity  as  a  friend  of 
the  knife.  We  spent  some  time  whittling. 
When  lunchtime  was  near,  I  suggested  that 
we  return  to  the  ward.  He  readily  complied. 
I  then  offered  to  take  him  to  the  nurse's  sta- 
tion to  show  him  where  the  knife- was  to  be 
kept.  He  tossed  me  the  knife,  said  I  could  put 
it  away,  and  he  went  to  lunch. 

ROUND     THE     CLOCK 

SCHOOL  was  a  serious  problem.  The 
boys  came  with  deep-rooted  learning  diffi- 
culties, and  some  slipped  back  further  after 
their  arrival.  One  youngster  who  was  supposed 
to  be  third-grade  level  insisted  on  sitting  on  the 
floor  and  playing  with  blocks  like  a  five-year-old. 

The  boys  automatically  rejected  any  overt 
attempt  to  teach  them,  and  they  were  shrewd  in 
detecting  covert  attempts.  During  a  time  when 
they  had  a  stamp-collecting  bug,  a  teacher  tried 
to  get  some  geography  across  by  using  a  map  to 
which  stamps  had  been  attached.  The  boys  could 
win  the  stamps  by  naming  the  countries  on 
which  they  appeared.  It  worked  briefly,  until 
one  of  the  boys  caught  on.  "This  is  just  a  way 
to  get  us  to  learn,"  he  announced,  and  that 
ended  it. 

Life  in  the  Clinical  Center  ward  resembled  a 
cross  between  a  summer  camp  and  a  small, 
progressive  private  school.  The  days  began  at 
7:00  a.m.  when  radio  music  was  played  over  the 
intercoms  that  had  kept  a  quiet  watch  on  the 
boys'  bedrooms  during  the  night.  Breakfast  was 
preceded  by  a  council  meeting  at  which  the  boys 
participated  in  charting  the  day's  activities- 
should  they  go  swimming  or  skating  after  school, 
etc.  After  breakfast  came  the  morning  school 
session— at  first  with  individual  instruction;  later 
three  to  a  classroom. 

School  was  followed  by  lunch,  a  rest  period  in 
their  rooms  with  games,  and  a  short  school  ses- 
sion. The  rest  of  the  afternoon  was  for  play  or 
a  special  project.  Some  time  during  each  day, 
according  to  a  set  schedule,  each  boy  had  an 
hour's  individual  play  therapy  with  one  of  the 


60 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


three  psychotherapists.  Around  5:00  p.m.,  the 
boys  went  to  their  rooms  to  prepare  for  suppei 
at  5:30.    Then  came  games  in  the  playroom  or 

television  in  the  lounge.  At  8:.'!0,  showers,  an 
evening  snack,  and  bed. 

Everything  possible  was  done  to  temper  the 
institutional  setting.  The  boys  had  a  big  fenced 
playground  on  the  Center's  grounds.  There  were 
cook-outs,  camping  trips,  swimming  at  the  Wash- 
ington "Y,"  visits  to  a  drugstore  whose  proprie- 
tor was  interested  in  the  project.  Sometimes  the 
boys  were  taken  to  a  public  playground;  they 
even  went  trick-or-treating  on  Hallowe'en  after 
arrangements  had  been  made  with  the  selected 
people  in  the  neighborhood.  All  trips  were,  of 
course,  chaperoned— at  first  by  six  counselors, 
later  by  just  one  or  two.  Occasionally,  some  ol 
the  normal  youngsters  who  had  tested  the  ward 
visited  the  boys  and  some  rather  guarded  friend- 
ships developed. 

HALFWAY     HOUSE 

WITH  the  growth  ol  the  boys'  self-con- 
trol, the  hospital  setting  became  more 
and  more  unsatisfactory.  Despite  all  the  outside 
activities  home  base  was  still  a  hospital  ward, 
with  the  hospital  smell  always  faintly  in  the  air; 
any  exclusion  had  to  be  carefully  planned;  and 
solitude,  a  precious  childhood  necessity,  was  haul 
to  come  by.  Once  during  a  picnic  a  boy  dis- 
appeared. A  staff  member  finallv  found  him 
sitting  on  the  bank  of  a  brook,  gazing  at  the 
water.  Asked  if  anything  was  troubling  him, 
he  replied  dreamily:  "No,  it's  just  so  epiiel  and 
wonderful  here." 

A  residence  was  obviously  the  answer,  so  a 
rambling,  modern  piece  ol  tippet  <  lass  suburbia 
was  built  on  the  NIH  grounds.  In  government 
records  ii  is  Building  T-l.  a  temporary  structure 
despite  its  $100,000  price  tag.  Red]  has  come  to 
call  it  "Hallway  House"  because  he  feels  that  in 
moving  from  the  locked  ward  to  this  open,  home- 
like setting,  the  boys  are  roughly  halfway  to  the 
outside  world. 

In  addition  to  meeting  the  present  needs  of 
the  boys,  Redl  believes  that  "Hallway  House" 
will  provide  valuable  research  on  the  proper 
ingredients  for  the  successful  transfer  of  a  child 
from   an   institution   to  life  outside. 

"One  of  the  reasons  kids  come  back  to  in- 
stitutions," he  says,  "may  well  be  the  suddenness 
of  the  switch  from  tlie  institutional  life  to  the 
strains  of  life  at  home  or  in  a  foster  home.  II  a 
satisfactory  in-between  setting  can  be  devised, 
many  kids  may  avoid  those  return  trips." 


When  the  boys  Inst  learned  ol  the  plans  to 
give  them  a  house— with  no  locked  doors  or  high 
fences— they  were  uneasy.  "But  won't  we  run 
away?"  one  asked.  Actually,  Dr.  Redl  sees  run- 
away attempts  as  a  natural— even  necessary— step 
toward  getting  back  to  normal  life.  "That's  the 
way  they'll  learn  the  consequences  of  their  acts," 
he  says.  "We  don't  want  to  make  them  into  good 
hospital  patients.  They  need  the  reactions  of 
other  people  now— people  who  will  not  lake  a 
clinical  attitude  toward  their  misdeeds."  He  did, 
however,  introduce  the  boys  to  the  police  so  that 
if  they  should  run  away  their  return  would  be 
cjuick  and  easy.  So  far  there  have  been  no  run- 
away attempts.  The  boys  seem  thoroughly  satis- 
lied  with  their  paneled  living-room  with  fire- 
place, big  play-room  and  kitchen  where  the  re- 
frigerator can  be  raided  for  Cokes  and  snacks. 
There  is  a  dot;  to  play  with;  grass  and  trees  just 
outside. 

The  boys  are  also  becoming  members  ol  the 
community.  Though  they  still  visit  the  Clinical 
Center  for  therapy  sessions,  they  are  attending 
public  schools  ol  Montgomery  County.  They 
hope  to  join  the  Boy  Scouts,  and  they  tan  and 
do  entertain  their  friends  in  their  home. 

The  stall,  too,  has  been  reorganized.  There  is 
a  house  mother,  who  lives  with  the  boys;  a  resi- 
dence director;  an  assistant  director;  and  a  pro- 
gram director.  The  corps  ol  nurses,  counselors, 
teachers,  and  researchers  has  been  cut  to  eleven. 

Redl  is  walking  a  tightrope  in  setting  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  residence.  He  wants  it  to  be 
homelike,  and  it  is.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
doesn't  want  the  boys  to  get  the  idea  that  this 
air-conditioned  well-staffed  establishment  is  the 
kind  of  house  they  can  expect  to  live  in  when 
they  go  into  the  outside  world. 

Meanwhile,  back  at  the  Center,  Dr.  Redl  is 
branching  out.  When  the  boys  moved  to  Hall- 
way House,  they  were  replaced  by  a  group  of 
children  of  nursery-school  age,  who  stayed  six 
weeks  as  part  of  a  special  research  project.  Next 
came  a  group  ol  acting-out  boys  between  seven- 
and-a-hall  and  eight-and-a-half,  slanted  more  eli- 
te cilv  toward  schizophrenia  than  their  predeces- 
sors. Eventually,  there  will  be  another  long-term 
project. 

WHAT     IT     WILL     PROVE 

DR  .  REDL  expects  that  within  the  next 
year  or  two  published  material  based  on 
the  project's  findings  will  begin  to  come  out, 
and  he  hopes  that  then  the  life-space  interview 
technicjue  may  become  a  standard  tool  for  people 


SONG 


61 


who  work  with  children.  He  also  hopes  that  the 
data  will  provide  a  set  of  new  guides  to  measure 
improvement  in  the  behavior  of  disturbed  chil- 
dren. Too  often,  he  says,  adults  mistake  "surface 
improvement"  for  the  real  thing,  or  regard  "tem- 
porary disorganized  behavior"  as  a  basic  dis- 
turbance rather  than  a  possible  mask  for  im- 
provement. 

It  is  possible,  Redl  believes,  that  the  project 
will  eventually  produce  a  handbook  for  the  care 
of  hyper-aggressive  children,  and  attack  such 
questions  as  these: 

(1)  Just  how  much'  aggressiveness  does  a  child 
need  in  order  to  meet  today's  demands?  It's 
possible— even  easy— to  kill  aggressiveness  en- 
tirely, according  to  Redl,  but  this  merely  leaves 
the  child  unable  to  fend  for  himself.  The 
problem  is  to  retain  just  the  right  amount. 

(2)  How  can  hyper-aggressive  children  be  led 
to  work  out  some  of  their  aggression  through 
fantasies,  daydreams,  arts  and  crafts,  instead  of 
having  to  act  them  out  "for  real"? 

(3)  What  happens  to  adults  in  their  relation- 
ships with  aggressive  and  hyper-aggressive  chil- 
dren? How  do  you  select  the  adults  who  are 
best  suited  for  work  in  this  field? 

(4)  What  is  the  nature  of  group  excitement, 
the  sort  of  thing  that  can  be  seen  at  almost  any 
child's  birthday  party  and,  in  greatly  magnified 
form,  in  a  group  of  acting-out  children? 

Dr.  Redl  further  hopes  to  extract  from  the 
project  a  great  deal  of  specific  information  on 
one  of  his  favorite  subjects— controls.  "It  isn't 
true,"  he  says,  "that  we  want  all  life  controlled 
from  within.  We  get  a  compulsive  character 
that  way.  We  all  need  a  certain  amount  of  out- 
side controls-we  obey  the  speed  laws  better  if 
we  know  a  cop  is  on  the  highway."  But  which 
outside  controls  will  work  with  children  and 
which  won't?  How  do  you  develop  the  proper 
balance  of  outside  and  inside  controls?  What 
amounts  of  each  are  needed  at  different  ages? 

Yardsticks  in  still  another  area— the  relation- 
ship between  a  child's  environment  and  his  men- 
tal health— may  also  be  extracted  from  the  rec- 
ords. "We  must  come  to  grips  with  the  ingredi- 
ents in  the  child's  environment  so  we  can  see 
what  is  wrong  and  what  to  do  about  it,"  Dr. 
Redl  asserts. 

Other  areas  in  which  he  expects  the  project's 
files  to  be  helpful  are  the  development  of  guide 
lines  on  how  regular  school  procedures  can  min- 
imize emotional  disturbances,  a  set  of  standards 
for  the  operation  of  treatment  homes  for  dis- 
turbed children,  and  a  whole  pharmacopoeia  of 
games  and  projects  to  use  in  teaching  and  enter- 


SONG 

EMILIE  BIX  BUCHWALD 


cold  I  walk  and  cold  I  wander, 

Wintering  the  lifetime  out. 

Owl  and  weasel  watch  the  warren 

Where  I  whimper  winter  doubt. 

They   are   sure   as   frost   and   biding 

Silent  as  the  winter  pause. 

Naked,  I  can  only  envy 

The  old  camouflage  for  claws. 


taining    both    normal    and    disturbed    children. 

Can  information  with  such  broad  application 
come  from  the  observations  on  just  six  children? 
Dr.  Redl  and  his  associates  think  it  can.  The  in- 
tensity and  accuracy  of  the  observation  are  the 
important  factors,  they  say. 

"Freud  based  his  conclusions  on  a  compara- 
tively few  cases,"  points  out  one  of  the  research- 
ers, "and  we  all  know  how  much  universality 
they  had."  Dr.  Redl  says  that  "while  our  work 
here  concerns  hyper-aggressive  children  and  the 
results  will  apply  most  directly  to  them,  many 
of  our  conclusions  will  also  have  broad  general 
applications." 

In  a  year  or  perhaps  a  year  and  a  half,  the  six 
boys  of  the  Redl  project  will  be  ready  to  go  into 
the  outside  world,  most  of  them  to  foster  homes. 
But  their  progress  will  be  followed  for  an  in- 
definite time  after  that. 

No  one  minimizes  the  difficulties  still  ahead  of 
them.  They  will  probably  be  "different"  in  many 
respects  throughout  their  lives;  it  is  hard  to  ex- 
pect otherwise  for  children  who  have  had  their 
experiences.  But  Dr.  Redl  feels  they  have  a  rea- 
sonable chance  of  happy  and  productive  lives. 

When  they  leave  his  orbit,  their  backgrounds 
will  still  be  with  them.  But  they  will  know  much 
that  they  didn't  know  when  they  came  to  NIH— 
that  they,  too,  can  love  and  be  loved;  that  they 
can  find  gratification  and  release  in  normal  ac- 
tivities; that  there  is  a  tenable  middle  ground 
between  the  demands  of  their  impulses  and  the 
limitations  imposed  by  life,  and  that  in  that 
middle  ground  they  can  be  happy.  These  are 
things  they  would  not  have  learned  in  the  re- 
formatories, prisons,  and  asylums  to  which  they 
would  almost  certainly  have  been  doomed  had 
they  not  been  brought  to  the  Clinical  Center. 


Harper's  presents  the  new  1958  (jjr$M 

INTERCONTINENTAL 


Designed  by  Tomi  Ungerer 
in  six  models,  all  classics. 


THE  PARTHENON 


"the  newest  thing  on  ear] 


THE  NEBUCHADNEZZfl 


THE  CHOW  MEIN 


THE  NOTRE  DAME 


.  anyway 


>> 


THE  CARTOUCHE 


vlf  you  can't  make  friends 
with  an  Intercontinental, 
you  can't  make  friends" 


DETAIL  OF  THE  GABRIEL 


JcPn^    24^1  ewt 


Martin   Green 


The  iron  corset 
on  Britain's 
Spirit 


A  rebellious  Englishman  examines  the 

peculiar  kind  of  aristocracy  which 

still  dominates  his  country — and  which  is 

smothering  it  in  £ood  manners,  mummified 

ideas,  and   dried-up  sentimentality. 

TH  E  idea  <>l  an  Englishman  in  most  Amer- 
icans' minds  is  something  quite  clear  and 
vivid  and  single.  He  is  polite,  diffident,  with  a 
murmurous,  richly  cultured  voice,  whimsical  and 
witty,  though  with  a  rigid  unspoken  moral  code; 
his  hair  is  rather  long  and  his  clothes  rather 
Edwardian,  with  a  suggestion  of  conscious  fancy 
dress,  but  surprisingly  sharp-wilted  and  strong- 
willed  underneath.  Lord  Peter  Wimsey.  Rex 
Harrison.  Mr.  Macmillan.  And  of  course  Eng- 
lishmen are  like  that.  Only  it's  a  small  minority 
of  them.   These  are  the  "British." 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  define  and  specify  the 
merely  British,  without  quotation  marks.  The 
Northerner,  for  instance,  who  is  still  a  type,  a 
myth,  at  the  level  of  popular  jokes,  has  received 
no  attention  at  the  upper  levels  of  culture 
for  many  years.  Characters  in  J.  B.  Priestley's 
books  and  his  own  public  persona  are  versions 
of  this  Northern  idea;  yet  it  is  possible  to  be, 
and  great  numbers  of  Englishmen  are,  most 
valuably  intelligent  and  mature  in  a  distinctively 
Northern  way.  The  Northerner— that  is,  the 
man  from  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire— is  tougher, 
blunter,  dowdier,  warmer  than  the  Southerner, 
usually    an    industrial    worker,    always    a    prole- 


tarian, altOgethei  less  pretentious,  less  cosmo- 
politan, less  socially  flexible,  more  strongly 
rooted  in  himself  and  his  own  fireside.  The  one 
adequate  symbol  is  Gracie  Fields,  the  greatest 
British  entertainer  of  our  time.  Her  kind  of 
humor,  unsophisticated  but  keen-wilted,  hci  kind 
ol  charm,  plain,  honest,  hearty,  unseductive,  her 
kind  ol  energy,  gawky  rather  than  graceful,  her 
piercingly  direct  and  simple  sentimentality,  these 
are  Lancashire  personified. 

But  othei  parts  of  the  country  also  produce 
British  not  "British"  types.  Somerset,  for  in- 
stance, produced  Ernest  Bevin,  the  only  poli- 
tician I  remember  to  reach  Cabinet  tank  without 
becoming  "British"  on  the  way.  His  roughness, 
heaviness,  slowness,  dowdiness,  his  obvious  in- 
tegrity,  his   self-declared   limitedness,   were   the 

eliieel  antithesis  ol  .Anthony  Eden.  Photographs 
of  him  fox-trotting  at  Moscow  with  Lady  Diana 
Duff-Cooper,  or  of  Mis.  Bevin  at  a  fashion  show 
in  Paris  accompanied  by  Mrs.  (ilun chill,  were 
both  ludicrous  and  immensely  encouraging.  Or 
take  the  industrial  Midlands,  Nottinghamshire 
and  Derbyshire.  And  here,  for  the  fust  and  only 
time,  we  have  the  advantage  that  our  subject 
has  been  seen  for  us  and  given  to  us  by  a  bril- 
liant sensibility.  The  home  life  of  Paul  and 
Miriam  in  Sons  and  Lovers,  the  first  half  of  The 
Lost  Girl,  short  stories  by  Lawrence  like  "Fanny 
and  Annie"  and  "Tickets,  Please,"  should  con- 
vince us  that  there  are  many  ways  ol  being 
British,  deeply  exciting  and  admirable  ones,  re- 
lated to  the  "British"  way  only    by  antithesis. 

All  the  people  I  have  mentioned  are  fully 
the  product  of  their  social  situation,  their  Eng- 
land, and  they  are  fully  alive  and  important 
human  beings.  They  are  not,  as  the  world 
assumes,  hall-finished  products,  halfway  toward 
being  "British."  They  have  all,  in  fact,  an  im- 
plicit hostility  to  that,  a  need  to  attack  polish, 
brilliance,  and  dignity  of  that  kind.  La  pudeur, 
la  froideur,  le  fiegme  anglais,  those  were  the 
phrases  I  had  thrown  at  me  in  France;  no  won- 
der the  French  consider  Galsworthy  and  Charles 
Morgan  better  representatives  of  England  than 
Lawrence,  in  America  it  is  polish,  culture,  and 
an  almost  sinister  old-world  charm  1  feel  people 
looking  for  in  me.  They  should  think  again 
and  realize  that  the  majority  of  British  people 
don't  specialize  in  these  commodities. 

Nowadays  the  North  and  all  the  other  districts 
have  disappeared  from  the  map,  the  Northerner 
is  only  a  comic,  one-dimensional  figure;  in  a  film 
a  local  accent  signalizes  humorous  relief— only 
characters  speaking  BBC  English  are  to  be  taken 
seriously.    In  the  past  it  was  not  always  so.    Mrs. 


THE     IKON     CORSET     ON      It  R  I T  A I N '  S     SPIRIT  <>5 

Gaskell's  North  and  South  deals  with  the  difficul-  Henry  James'  techniques,  and  Eliot's  in  poetry, 

ties  of  adjustment  foragirl  from  the  South  going  The  reason  is  thai  Lawrence  was  nol  "British"; 

to  live  in  the  North,  After  1800  it  was,  of  course,  his  mind,  Mis  sensibility,  his  temperament,  the 

the  big  factories  and  mines  in  the  North  which  essence  <>l  him,  is  alien  to  those  who  are.  They 

dominated    the   contrast.    Bui    there   were   *  I  i  I  -  cannol   learn  from  him.     This  same  alienation 

leienees    before    (hen.    The    Danes   settled    imieh  is    obvious    in    Orwell's    ineffectual    attempts    to 

more    heavily    in    the    North     the    language    still  leel  like,  he  like,  a  working  class  man. 

hears   traces  of   it;    William   the  Conqueror   radi-  It  is  also  significant  thai  so  many  greal   writers 

rally  impoverished  it  in  the  effort  to  subordinate  iii   English  this  century  have  nol   been   English 

it  when  he  regulated  his  new  kingdom;  all  the  by  birth,  Eliot,  fames,  Conrad,  foyce,  Yeats,  how 

early  kings  encouraged  and  protected  the  South,  much   of  greal    vision    is    left    when    those    names 

which  was  much  more  theirs,  and  merely  ruled  are  taken  away?    And  all  these  naturally  knew 

i he  North.  only  the  educated  aristocracy.  They  had  no  inti- 

For  eight  centuries  the  North  lived  to  itself,  mate  understanding  of  people  like  Lawrence's 

played    a    very   small    part    in    British    history.  parents  and  friends.  They  could  only  see  them, 

Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Pope,   Johnson—  from  a  greal  distance,  as  underground  creatures, 
there  are  no  great   names  that  occur  Io  one  any- 
where north  of  Warwickshire,  north  ol  the  circle 
whose  center  was  London  and  the  monarchy  and 

the  artery  to  the  Continent.    England's  second  [    r  WOULD  nol  be  so  important  il  merely 


VV  II  A  I     IS     A     <;  E  IN   I   I,  E  rvi  A  IN 


I 


great  port  was  Bristol.   The  cities  of  the  North  JL  the  outside  world  took  "Britain"  Lor  Britain, 

were     York,     Chester,     Durham,     administrative  The  dangerous  tiling  is  that    England  does,  too. 

centers.    Birmingham,  Manchester,  Leeds,  Wol-  it  docs  nol  take  Ernesi   Bevin  <>r  Grade  Fields 

verhampton,  Liverpool,  Sheffield,  were  villages.  or  D.  II.  Lawrence  seriously,  because  (hey  are 

When  they  became  great  cities,  in  the  nineteenth  nol    educated.    That    is    why    they   seem    hall 

century,  they  did  take  their  place  on  the  cultural  finished  products.    Education  in  England  is  in- 

map,  but  as  a  question  mark,  a  Dark  Continent,  separable  from  the  process  of  becoming  a  gentle 

whose  inhabitants,  it  was  presumed,  would  be  man.  However  much  like  Ernesi  Bevin  or  Gracie 

given  a  language  and  a  form  in  due  time.   Mrs.  Fields  your  parents  may  he-,  yon  must   become 

Gaskell  and   Disraeli  tackled  the  problem,  but  much  more  like  Anthony  Eden  before  v<>n  feel 

were  no!   big  enough  lor  il;  and  no  great   writers  able  (<>  write  a   novel,  or  even   to  express  a  coiili 

look  up  their  work.    George  Eliot   belonged  to  dent   opinion  about    novels.    All   the  modes  of 

the      non-industrial      Midlands.        The      Brontes'  expression     in     the    country     are    controlled     by 

genius  was  inner-directed.  Our  greal  lower  mid-  gentlemen;   the  world  of  the  arts,  of  the  uni 

die-class    writers,    Dickens    and    Wells,    belonged  veisilies,    ol    the    educated    puss,    of    the    refined 

to  the  South.     There  have  nevei    heen  any  work-  entertainments,    ol    leaching,    ol    administration, 

ing-class  writers  in  England.  are  all  controlled  by  gentlemen.  Theii  sensibility 

And  dining  this  century,  ol  course,  literature  is  dominant;  there  is  no  other  sensibility.   Before 

has    retreated    up   the   social    ladder,    All    our  an  Englishman  feels  ready  to  think    nol  merely 

authors  are  public -school  hoys    Waugh,  Greene,  to  express  himself    but  to  think  about  more  than 

Auden,  Isherwood,  Connolly,  even  Orwell.   Pub-  local   matters,   he   must    recast    himself   in    thai 

lie-school    hoys    c; ol     belong    Io    any    locality.  mold.     More    usually,    he    will    lind    he    has    heen 

They  are  "British,"  gentlemen,  ruling  class.    The  so  molded  from  the  age  ol  eleven. 

bulk    ol    the   population,   after    its   one    heave-  Foi    nowadays  gentlemen  are  not,  of  course, 

toward    speech    in    the    nineteenth    <  c  i  il  in  y,    lias  I  hose  horn  into  <  ei  lain  families  01    large  incomes. 

sunk  back   into  silence.  I    think    thai    in    no    country    in    the    world    is    a 

rhe  one  exception  to  this  is  again  D.  II.  Law-  careei   so  open   to  talents  as  in   England   now. 

renre.    lie  is  the  one   writer  of  this  cenliny   who  Ccnl  Iciucn  are  in  Tail  an  intellectual  aiislocracy; 

is   not    "British";    he    is    the   one    writer    who    has  and  yet   ihey  remain  at    the  same  I  ime  essenl  ially 

seen    and    taken    seriously    the    British;    hi'    is    the  a  social  class. 

one    who    has,    01    could    have,    given    a    voice    to  I  low    this    can    be,    the    process    by    which    the 

these  other  parts  of  the  population.    And    he   is  class  is  selected   and   trained    I    may  perhaps   bus  I 

the  exception   who  proves  the   rule.    Despile   the-  illustrate    by    my   own    case.     I    was    born    into    a 

amazing  extensions  of  vision  and  technique  be'  working-class  family,  none  of  whose  members,  on 

introduced    in   the   novel,   no   writer  since   has  eithei  side,  had  been  even  to  secondary  school; 

made  use  ol    them,      think   how   many  have   used  but  at  eleven   I   look  an  examination  which  every 


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child  in  the  country  now  takes,  and  was  sent 
free  to  the  county  grammar  school.  Approxi- 
mately the  top  10  per  cent  in  that  examination 
go  to  the  grammar  school,  and  the  yeai  ly  intake 
is  divided  into  three  classes,  again  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  ability,  so  that  the  children  I  competed 
against  during  my  school  career  were,  theo- 
retically,  the  brightest  3  per  cent  of  my  contem- 
poraries. And  we  competed  in  a  way  that  an 
American  would  scarcely  imagine,  perhaps.  At 
the  end  of  each  term  we  were  arranged  in  order, 
from  first  to  thirtieth,  in  each  subject,  and  again, 
from  first  to  thirtieth  in  the  form.  All  this 
is  mostly  pedagogy,  ol  course,  but  it  has  its 
educational  effect,  too.  It  magnifies  the  intel- 
lectual process  in  our  eyes,  fosters  a  quick-witted 
apprehension  and  manipulation  oi  lads,  and  a 
disrespectful  familiarity  with  areas  ol  know  ledge 
and  systems  ol  thought;  but  above  all,  it  makes 
us  extraordinarily  malleable,  in  our  deepest 
imaginations,  by  the  teacher. 

The  grammar-school  teacher  in  England  is  a 
very  important  person,  much  more  so,  both  for 
the  influence  he  has,  and  lor  the  tradition  he 
represents,  than  the  high-school  teacher  in 
America.  His  level  of  intelligence  and  education 
is  high,  especially  teachers  in  the  arts  subjects, 
who  are  often  Oxford  and  Cambridge  graduates; 
a  good  number  of  our  writers,  painters,  musi- 
cians, thinkers,  have  been  grammar-school 
teachers  at  the  beginning  of  their  careers.  In 
America  the  same  men  would  be  university 
teachers.  They  more  than  anyone  else  in  our 
lives  represent  to  that  top  10  per  cent  in  the 
grammar  schools  the  maturely  intelligent  man, 
give  our  minds  their  mildly  academic  cast,  set 
that  stamp  on  the  national  type.  The  grammar- 
school  teacher  is  the  key  symbol  of  modern 
Britain,  the  modern  John  Bull,  in  his  armchair, 
in  a  tweed  sportscoat,  with  leather-patched 
elbows,  smoking  and  reading.  He  is  shabbier, 
more  resigned  than  the  "Britisher"  described 
before,  but  under  the  domination  of  the  same 
idea— what  he  is  reading  is  probably  Evelyn 
Waugh  or  Dorothy  Sayers.  His  great  emblem  is 
the  pipe,  with  all  its  connotations  of  relaxed, 
shrewd,  twinkling,  masculine  geniality;  he  has 
had  and  given  up  larger  ambitions;  he  is  the 
onlooker  at  lite,  very  good  at  crossword  puzzles, 
the  piano,  and  carpentry;  he  knows  a  great  deal. 
To  the  bright  boy  from  a  poor,  uneducated 
home,  he  is  the  all-obliterating  symbol  of  clever, 
authoritative,  gentle,  correct  manhood. 

A  good  example  of  the  type,  and  the  pro- 
found influence  he  exerts,  is  Mr.  Holmes  in 
Isherwood's   Lions   and   Sfiadoius.     Mr.    Holmes 


was  a  public-school  teacher,  but  the  difference 
is  not  important.  The  state  grammar  schools  are 
avowed  imitations  of  the  public  schools.  The 
majority  ol  them  were  set  up  in  consecpience  of 
the  Education  Act  of  1911,  when  it  must  have 
seemed  there  was  no  better  model.  The  house 
system,  the  prefect  system,  the  emphasis  on 
games,  the  idea  of  school  spirit,  all  these  are 
transplants  from  the  public  school.  In  one  pro- 
found  sense  they  are  doomed  to  defeat,  because 
the)  are  not  boarding  schools,  and  the  homes  the 
children  go  back  to  each  day  have  no  sense  of 
special  privilege  and  responsibility,  so  the  hot- 
house atmosphere  necessary  for  a  private  social 
code  is  broken  open  and  dissipated.  So  while  the 
grammar  school  turns  out  gentlemen,  they  are 
in  a  depressed,  deprecatory,  slightly  charlatan 
modern  mode;  because  almost  the  primary  fact 
in  the  consciousness  of  staff  and  bright  boys  is 
that  their  schools  are  not  public  schools. 

MA  KE-BELIE  VE 

ON  E  extra-curricular  activity  deserves 
special  mention,  the  debating  club.  De- 
bates in  English  schools  are  over  ordinary  topics, 
like  "Can  any  good  come  of  war?"  etc.  What  is 
extraordinary  is  the  excess  of  formality  and  lack 
of  sincerity.  We  begin,  after  all,  at  thirteen,  long 
before  the  topics  could  mean  much  to  us,  and 
before  discussion,  let  alone  debate,  could  be  a 
natural  activity.  The  aim  is  openly,  successfully, 
exclusively,  to  sharpen  our  wits.  Quite  often,  for 
example,  we  have  frankly  fantastic  subjects  like 
"That  this  house  believes  in  Father  Christmas," 
and  they  are  argued  just  as  acutely,  just  as  elabo- 
rately, with  the  same  formal,  self-conscious 
politeness.  This  influence  continues  through  the 
years  at  the  university.  The  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge Unions  are  much  the  largest  under- 
graduate organizations;  the  post  of  President  of 
the  Union  is  a  very  high  recommendation  in  the 
outside  world;  and  the  emphasis  is  again  on  bril- 
liant manipulation  of  the  rules  of  debate,  and 
of  the  essential  paradox  of  the  situation.  For  the 
situation  is  essentially  make-believe,  but  must  be 
taken  seriously  up  to  a  point— and  not  beyond. 
This  is  the  essence  of  "civilization"  as  the  word 
is  used  in  England.  Mr.  Derek  Colville,  in  his 
article  in  Harper's  October  issue,  mentions  the 
precocious  sophistication  of  English  undergrad- 
uates. The  debate  is  a  good  example  ot  the 
influences  that  cause  that  sophistication;  it  is 
sophistry,  in  the  full  Greek  sense. 

Finally  let  us  mention  the  Sixth  Form.    The 
Sixth   (another   legacy   of   the  public  school)   is 


THE     IRON     CORSET     ON     BRITAIN'S     SPIRIT 


67 


quite  different  from  any  other  form  in  the  school, 
and  has  a  powerful  mystique.  Boys  in  the 
Sixth  are  given  many  privileges,  exempted  from 
many  rules,  have  their  own  library  and  study, 
free  periods  to  work  by  themselves;  most  of  them 
become  prefects,  responsible  for  the  discipline 
of  the  rest  of  the  school;  they  are  grown-up  (in 
official  theory,  of  course);  they  become  (again  the 
practice  is  not  exactly  like  the  theory)  intellectual 
equals  of  the  teachers,  initiates  of  the  port-wine, 
pipe-smoking,  Latin-tagging  society  of  the  staff- 
room.  They  are  taught  by  the  best  teachers  in 
the  school,  which  means  the  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge graduates,  the  most  genuine  gentlemen. 
The  classes  are  very  small,  as  few  as  three  or  four. 
They  are  taken  into  the  teachers'  confidence, 
which  does  not  mean,  as  it  might  here,  that  the 
teacher  interests  himself  in  the  boy's  private  life; 
in  England  the  movement  is  in  the  reverse 
direction,  and  the  ,boy  is  allowed  to  hear  the 
master's  frankest  comments  on  the  events  of  the 
day,  however  cynical  and  amoral  they  may  be.  I 
was  not  yet  fifteen  when  I  entered  the  Sixth,  and 
I  spent  three  years  in  that  intellectual  and 
spiritual  forcing  house.  By  eighteen  I  was  a 
gentleman,  beyond  hope  of  reprieve. 

I  had  been  radically  separated  from  my  home 
and  relations;  not  by  any  crude  snobbery,  but 
by  a  genuine  and  inevitable  introduction  into 
a  new  mental  world,  with  all  sorts  of  tastes  and 
desires.  I  had  slid  over  from  Gracie  Fields  to 
Anthony  Eden.  Of  course  I  wasn't  the  "Brit- 
isher" I  described  before.  Nobody  could  be  that 
flagrant,  except  abroad.  I  saw  through  Lord 
Peter  Wimsey  at  sixteen.  But  I  remained  a 
subdued,  self-conscious,  negative  variant  on  him, 
because  it  never  occurred  to  me  there  was  any 
other  way  to  be.  For  a  sensitive,  intelligent 
person. 

Most  of  the  boys  in  the  Sixth  go  on  to  the 
universities  (under  2  per  cent  of  their  age. group) 
and  their  expenses,  for  living  as  well  as  fees,  are 
completely  paid  by  the  state.  I  spent  three  years 
reading  English  at  Cambridge,  three  years  of  a 
minimum  of  external,  formal  control,  but  per- 
haps stricter  informal  control  than  I'd  have  had 
at  an  American  university.  Attendance  at  lec- 
tures was  not  checked,  or  even  much  desired,  nor 
did  one  write  papers  for  the  lectures;  I  went  once 
a  week  to  a  supervisor,  who  told  me  frankly  he'd 
be  better  pleased  if  I  would  stay  away,  and  wrote 
three  or  four  essays  a  term  for  him,  strictly  when 
/  felt  like  it.  There  were  no  grades.  All  one  had 
to  do  was  prepare  for  the  final  exams;  copies  of 
old  papers  were  available;  books  were  available 
in  the  libraries;  and  there  was,  we  were  always 


reminded,  all  the  brilliant  conversation  in  the 
world. 

The  emphasis  was  on  general  education,  on 
wisdom.  For  British  students  the  university  is 
merely  the  crystallization  of  the  ideal  com- 
munity yearned  after  by  their  school  teachers. 
That  is  the  extraordinary  glamor  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  their  unreality,  the  way.  one  knows, 
long  before  one  gets  there,  that  it  will  soon  be 
over,  and  that  one  will  always  yearn  back  to  it; 
three  golden  years  when  every  unpleasant  fact  is 
excluded,  and  only  the  pleasant  facts  count,  in- 
telligence, manners,  high  spirits,  charm,  wit, 
beauty. 

At  twenty-one,  with  my  B.A.  from  Cambridge, 
I  faced  the  world  completely  transformed,  a 
gilded  youth;  knowing  it  was  gilt,  but  the  best 
gilt,  and  wasn't  that  better  than  bare  tin?  I 
stood  in  a  small  group,  a  minute  percentage  of 
my  contemporaries,  who  practically  monopolized 
all  the  best  jobs  in  the  British  Council,  the 
Foreign  Service,  UNESCO,  the  BBC,  the  Colonial 
Service,  the  administrative  grades  of  the  Civil 
Service,  teaching,  the  universities,  publishing, 
the  educated  press,  the  Church,  the  Army,  Navy, 
and  Air  Force,  all  the  vantage  points  from  which 
our  manner  and  our  mind  could  impress  them- 
selves on  the  country  and  the  world  as  the  edu- 
cated way  to  be,  as  "Britain." 

Besides  which,  there  are  other  systems  which 
produce  gentlemen.  Those  born  into  the  right 
families  and  incomes,  those  who  go  to  the  public 
schools,  become  the  real  thing  much  less  self- 
consciously. The  provincial  universities,  unable 
to  be  anything  different  from  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, produce  their  own  slightly  more  de- 
pressed, deprecatory,  and  charlatan  gentlemen. 
The  training  for  medicine  and  law— for  all  the 
professions— gives  the  manner.  Music  and  the 
theater  demand  it  from  their  members;  Sir 
Thomas  Beecham,  Sir  Malcolm  Sargent,  Sir 
Laurence  Olivier,  Sir  John  Gielgud  are 
thoroughly  gentlemen.  And  indeed  everyone  in 
the  country,  from  the  crudest  social  climber  to 
the  most  sensitive  seeker  of  education  and  dis- 
tinction, is  bound  to  ape  it  sooner  or  later. 

T  H»E    DEAD    SHELL 

AL  L  of  which  wouldn't  be  half  so  tragic 
if  the  "British"  mind  weren't  dead,  no 
longer  able  to  deal  adequately  with  reality,  its 
modes  of  apprehension  a  dead  shell,  an  old  skin 
to  be  sloughed.  This  became  vivid  to  me  the 
other  day  at  "The  Colditz  Story"— the  story  of 
a  German  prison  camp,  written  by  one  of  the 


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inmates,  and  made  into  a  movie  with  actors 
of  considerable  ability  and  training,  Eric  Port- 
man  and  John  Mills— which  yet  presented  the 
(..  rmans  as  .ill  gross  and  Goeringish,  oi  rat-like 
.is  Goebbels,  all  violent  and  overbearing  and 
humorless,  and  the  British  as  all  light-hearted 
and  clean-limbed,  boyish,  larking  about,  ruffling 
their  hair,  baffling  then  captors  l>\  their  irre- 
sponsible good  humor.  1  here  is  no  echo  ol  the 
realitj  61  war— no  binl  <>l  real  hatred,  real  bore- 
dom, real  terror,  real  cruelty— only  school-boy 
magazine  equivalents.  There  is  no  reality  in  the 
relations  between  the  English  prisoners;  not 
even  the  transmuted  echo  oi  thai  realit)  caught 
in  "Stalag  17,"  a  more  simply  comic  film.  In 
even  i  second-rate  American  actor  \<>u  leel  the 
allusion  to  the  unspoken  parts  oi  Ins  personality 
—the  gross,  the  sensual,  the  brutal.  Bui  in  these 
sketches  there  is  no  allusion,  it  is  all  neatly 
excised,  and  you  are  lefl  with  something  .is  diy 
and  sweel  as  a  whifl  ol  lavender,  as  near  a  human 
being  as  a  fashion  sketi  li  of  1910. 

Ihe  British  mind  has  nol  yel  assimilated  the 
fit  si  world  war,  never  mind  the  second.  The  line 
between  officers  and  men  makes  both  groups 
unreal  to  the  imagination,  forces  them  into  false 
categories,  the  gentlemen  and  the  sons  ol  toil, 
with  neither  ol  whom  can  anyone  wholly  identify 
himself.  I  said  before  only  the  character  with 
the  BBC  acceni  is  taken  seriously.  I  should  have 
said  most  seriously.  In  fact  any  mode  of  speech 
in  England  is  an  accent,  suggesting  a  type,  with 
all  its  limits,  weaknesses,  sterilities.  Marlon 
Brando  or  Montgomery  Clifl  <  .w\  play  someone 
of  the  poorest  class  and  education  in  such  a  way 
that  you  can  forget  those  facts;  you  don't  have 
to  forget  them,  you  are  never  really  conscious  of 
them.  That's  just  what  can't  be  done  in  England. 
I  hat  is  why  an  artist  can  produce  only  a  gross 
caricature  ol  war;  or,  ol  course,  an  essentially 
private  picture.  He  can't  unself-consciously  live 
the  life  ol  the  people  involved.  Wilfred  Owen's 
and  Robert  Graves'  protests  against  the  complete 
failure  in  England  to  understand  what  the  wai 
was  are  fully  valid  today,  down  to  details.  The 
heroic  lies  ol  1914  were  not  told  again  in  1939, 
but  we  had  only  the  deprecatory  humor  oi 
Mrs.  Miniver  instead.  Hemingway's  and  Dos 
Passos'  protests  in  America  were  much  more 
effective;  fames  [ones  and  Norman  Mailer  had 
at  least  learned  that  lesson.  The  second  world 
war  was  presented  to  America  as  war.  But  in 
England  the  injunction  against  shouting  was 
Stronger  than  the  need  to  capture  and  express 
vital  expei  ieiH  e. 

Moreover  the  failure  of  a  British   film,  one 


made  with  talent,  like  "The  Colditz  Story,"  is 
mu(  h  more  serious  than  the  failure  of  the  equiva- 
lent  in  America  is.  Eric  Portman,  Kenneth 
Moie.  John  Mills  talk  and  chess,  and  I'm  sure 
think,  much  more  like  an  MP.  an  cclitoi  ol  the 
Times,  a  BBC  announcer,  than  John  Wayne 
does   his  equivalents.    It   doesn't    much   mallei    if 

fohn  Wayne  is  absurd.  Nobody  is  supposed  to 
take  him  seriously.  He  in  no  sense  represents 
the  educated  mind  ol  his  country.  Eri<  Portman 
does.  \t  the  end  ol  the  film,  as  British  com- 
manding officer,  he  brings  a  courtyard  of  bois- 
terous soldiers  to  order  with  two  quiet  words, 
leads  them  a  message  from  escaped  comrades,  in 
cool  defiance  ol  the  Germans  standing  l>\,  and 
walks  aua\  from  the  camera  o\c-r  the  cobble- 
stones, hands  in  pockets,  melancholy,  distin- 
guished, omniscient,  and  everyone  in  the  court- 
yard,  and    the  cinema,    is  obviousl)    supposed    to 

watch  in  quite  tense  admiration  and  sympathy— 
thins  seconds'  worth.  And  yet  I'd  swear  no 
intelligent  Englishman,  ol  whatever  education, 
could  honestly  leel  that  sympathy.  It's  too  old  a 
trick,  too  obvious,  too  self-satisfied.  loo  old  a 
trie  k  in  life  as  well  as  in  the  films. 

lint  we  will  noi  reject  it  in  life.   We  know  it's 

a  trick  hut  we  don't  see  anything  else  more 
genuine.  The  "British"  mind  works  in  self- 
conscious  cliches,  as  a  conversational  technique, 
and  in  the  large  dramatic  matters,  lose-,  war, 
duty.  It  must  surely  have  puzzled  Americans 
that  young  English  people,  graduates  ol  uni- 
versities, talk  and  act  like  characters  out  of 
Agatha  Christie.  But  to  us  all  the  possible 
varieties  ol  behavior  are  neatly  categorized,  all 
t luit  weakness  and  absurdities  equally  well 
known;  to  choose  any  other  than  the  "British" 
would  he  pointless,  unless  one  is  a  "character." 
It's  anothei  part  ol  the'  feeling  at  the  university 
I  mentioned,  that  all  the  important  possibilities 
have  been  explored  and  measured;  there  is  only 
the  rather  amusing,  rather  interesting,  i  at  her 
touching,  left. 

THE     WORLD     AS     HELL 

OF  COU  RS  E,  ihe  "British"  mind  has 
been  active  since  HMO.  Hut  I  suggest  that 
its  development  has  been  dominated  by  a  dis- 
covery of  the  religious  approach  to  life.  -More 
spec  ifically,  the  religious  retreat  from  life. 

The  dominant    figure   lor  most   of  this  period, 
alter  all,   has  been   T.  S.    1. licit.     The  only  oihei 

prophel  e>!  equal  size,  I).  II.  Lawrence,  has  been 

neglected  precisely  in  measure  as  he  stood  in  the 
opposite    direction    from    Eliot.     Eliot's   success 


THE     IRON     CORSET     ON     BRITAIN'S     SPIRIT 


69 


is  the  same  thing  as  Lawrence's  neglect.  The 
movement  of  the  'thirties  was  a  failure,  from 
every  point  of  view.  Our  themes  have  been  and 
are  Sin,  Doubt;  Catholicism,  Horror,  the  Limits 
of  Human  Goodness;  our  whipping  boys  have 
been  enthusiasts,  liberals,  optimists,  Noncon- 
formists (as  opposed  to  Anglicans).  We  have 
learned  to  see  the  world  as  hell  a  la  Greene,  and 
hell  a  la  Waugh.  Nobody  has  shown  us  a  per- 
son we  can  admire  and  love  dealing  with  life  in 
a  way  we  can  admire  and  love. 

The  English  imagination  has  been  dominated 
by  a  feeling  of  death,  decay,  and  hopelessness, 
and  by  an  aspiration  to  style  and  elegance.  These 
feelings  have  of  course  been  fed  by  recent  his- 
tory, particularly  in  its  impact  on  Britain's 
economic  and  international  position.  Their 
effects  can  be  seen  in  a  glance  at  the  cultural 
map.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  remarkably 
anti-American,  pro-French  orientation  of  most 
cultured  British  people.  Writers  of  the  kind  the 
British  call  brilliant— like  Wyndham  Lewis  and 
Iris  Murdoch— are  always  the  extreme  exponents 
of  this;  Lewis'  novel  Self-condemned  is  patho- 
logical in  its  virulence  against  the  New  World 
and  its  yearning  after  the  wit  and  clarity  and 
irony  of  France.  The  most  important  vein  of 
feeling  is  that  which  runs  from  Eliot  to  Graham 
Greene,  Angus  Wilson,  Evelyn  Waugh,  and 
those  like  him;  in  Greene  the  feeling  of  death  is 
strongest;  in  Waugh,  Anthony  Powell,  Nancy 
Mitford,  William  Plomer,  Sybille  Bedford,  etc., 
the  love  of  elegance— the  Sitwells  have  the  same 
Palladian  aspiration.  A  complementary  line  o£ 
intellectual  agility  allied  with  avowed  cliches  of 
the  imagination  runs  from  TIte  Confidential 
Clerk  to  Charles  Williams,  C.  S.  Lewis,  Dorothy 
Sayers,  Agatha  Christie. 

All  these  writers  portray  gentlemen,  strip  them 
to  absurdity,  finally  swaddle  them  in  pity;  "they 
are  poor  things,  but  they  are  the  best  humanity 
can  do,  so  .  .  ."  There  are,  of  course,  other 
orientations  in  the  British  mind,  some  of  them 
opposite  in  tendency.  I  claim  only  that  the  one 
hinted  at  here  is  dominant. 

Only  this  can  explain  the  enthusiasm  over 
The  Outsider,  which  was  really  a  humiliating 
incident  for  an  Englishman.  The  reviews  unani- 
mously and  wholeheartedly,  with  real  generosity, 
praised  it;  they  welcomed  an  important  new 
writer.  Reading  them  abroad,  long  before  I 
could  get  hold  of  the  book,  I  thought  something 
important  had  happened.  Somebody  without 
any  of  the  required  training  and  manner  had 
broken  into  the  closed  circle.  Three  weeks  after 
the   book   was   reviewed   in    the  Sunday    Times, 


Wilson  himself  was  writing  for  the  paper.  His 
rise  was  meteoric  and  quite  unprecedented.  But 
by  the  time  I  was  a  third  of  the  way  through  the 
book  I  realized  the  true  explanation.  Wilson  is 
brilliant,  Bohemian,  eccentric,  the  genius.  He  is 
the  permitted  exception;  sleeping  on  Hampstead 
Heath  is  the  perfect  touch  for  him;  he  is  almost 
like  one  of  those  brilliant  young  Frenchmen. 
The  book  itself  is  inaccurate  in  detail  and 
fraudulent  in  method  to  the  point  of  being  very 
bad.  The  reason  these  things  were  not  detected 
by  the  reviewers  is  that  it  said  what  they  wanted 
to  hear;  it  justified  them;  it  accumulated  the 
evidence  of  all  the  great  spiritual  giants,  from 
Dostoevski  to  Sartre,  to  prove  life  today  impos- 
sible, normal  happiness  out  of  the  reach  of, 
beneath  the  dignity  of  the  sensitive  man.  Such 
words,  from  a  young  man  in  a  turtle-necked 
sweater,  who  never  went  to  a  university,  and 
sleeps  out  at  night  in  a  public  park,  are  exactly 
the  mark  of  the  one  non-"British"  mode  the 
"British"  will  accept. 

We  don't  even  want  to  be  shown  someone  we 
can  admire  and  love  dealing  with  life  in  a  way 
we  can  admire  and  love. 

THE    NORTH    IS    DIFFERENT 

WHEN  I  went  back  to  England  last 
summer— after  a  year  in  Turkey,  where 
I  had  seen  and  heard  only  "Britain,"  at  the 
Embassy  and  the  British  Council  and  in  the 
papers  and  books  and  on  the  radio  and  the 
screen— I  wandered  round  London  and  Cam- 
bridge and  the  great  monuments,  extremely 
depressed,  i  was  in  a  country  of  pygmies,  de- 
liberately affected  and  malicious.  And  then  sud- 
denly, without  forethought,  when  I  was  visiting 
Wigan  in  Lancashire,  I  became  aware  that  that 
feeling  no  longer  rang  true.  The  faces  and  voices 
of  the  people,  their  clothes,  the  buildings  in  the 
street,  the  atmosphere,  the  landscape,  none  of  it 
was  "Britain."  It  was  a  totally  different  country 
and  people.  "Britain"  after  all  was  a  very  small 
minority.  Wigan  was  one  huge  tuning  fork;  lay 
it  to  your  ear,  and  all  the  melodies  at  present 
playing  are  false.  If  only  our  writers  would  do 
that.  But  the  revelation  was  two-fold;  diese 
streets  and  people  had  their  own  note,  to  which 
you  could  tune  your  whole  instrument.  There  is 
a  positive  social  atmosphere,  a  kindliness,  a  sin- 
cerity, a  shrewdness,  stimulating  those  qualities 
in  you,  making  it  a  good  place  to  live.  If  this 
Northern  nature,  this  mode  of  being,  could  be 
educated,  without  being  made  "British,"  the 
English  mind  might  move  forward  again,  move 


70 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


freely,  begin  again  to  see  and  feel  things  freshly 
and  vigorously. 

It's  plain  enough,  I  think,  where  Evelyn 
W'augh,  Nancy  Mitford,  Angus  Wilson,  get  the 
note  they  tune  themselves  to,  the  key  in  which 
they  play:  the  stately  homes  and  the  great  public 
buildings.  It  makes  an  unpleasant,  affected 
treble.  It's  obvious,  too,  that  there  are  many 
working-class  neighborhoods  which  give  off 
their  own  note,  quite  different  from  that  of 
Wigan.  I  make  no  case  for  "the  people";  I  am 
more  interested  in  the  intellectual  aristocracy. 
If  I  attack  them,  it  is  not  for  being  an  aristocracy, 
but  for  being  a  bad  one,  feeding  their  vitality 
from  meager,  polluted  streams.  There  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  working-class  places  are  in 
general  better  than  others.  The  suburbs  of  Lon- 
don, and  the  new  towns,  and  all  Surrey  and 
Hertfordshire,  most  of  the  South  of  England, 
have  their  own  note,  one  that  our  writers  have 
caught  well,  Eliot,  Auden,  Greene,  Spender, 
MacNeice,  etc.  There  more  than  anywhere  in 
the  world  the  mass  media  have  had  their  so  often 
prophesied,  so  often  lamented  effect;  everyone 
lives  in  the  arc-lamp  glare  of  the  Daily  Express 
and  the  Light  Programme  and  the  Ice  Rink  and 
the  Palais  de  Danse.  All  organic  life  is  killed,  and 
discriminating  people  weave  baskets  or  go  to  live 
in  .Majorca.  In  those  clean,  wide,  quiet  streets 
you  can  hear  that  note  very  clearly,  the  note 
of  conscious  smallness,  sameness,  separateness, 
"leave  me  alone  and  I'll  leave  you  alone." 

The  reasons  why  the  North  is  different  are  no 
doubt  complex,  but  one  may  point  out  that  the 
people  of  the  North  live  among  the  really 
dramatic  ruins  of  England.  The  castles  and 
abbeys  are  no  more  alive  to  the  imagination  than 
Hollywood  imitations,  but  those  northern  indus- 
trial towns  are  smoking  blackened  ruins  of  the 
great  thrust  of  energy  that  swung  the  world  on 
its  pivot,  flung  us  into  the  momentum  and  direc- 
tion we  are  trying  to  control  today.  These  are 
ruins  that  are  still  alive,  and  yet  are  soaked  in 
local  and  national  memories;  that  is  living  tradi- 
tion.   The  charm  of  the  English  countryside  is 


irredeemably  olde  worlde,  the  towns  are  too 
pretty  and  trivial,  the  history  is  hopelessly  in  the 
hands  ol  Olivier;  but  Wigan,  Preston,  Salford, 
keep  their  intensit)  and  freshness  of  impact, 
which  is  by  no  means  simply,  or  even  domi- 
nant!),  ugliness.  To  live  and  move  among  those 
buildings  is  to  be  held  to  a  highly  charged  bat- 
tery and  tested,  to  suffer  a  strongly  cauterizing 
touch  on  your  purposes  and  passions. 

It  is  there,  in  the  North  and  Midlands,  that 
British  people  can  still  be  serious  and  spon- 
taneous, lint  all  the  cleverest  children  every  year 
are  sent  to  school  to  be  made  "British,"  like  an 
offering  of  fust-born.  All  the  best  blood  is  fatally 
thinned.  England  must  break  its  dead  shell, 
slough  its  old  skin,  or  its  young  men  will  grow 
more  and  more  consciously  absurd,  their  minds 
will  grow  as  pretty  and  useless  as  Chinese  feet, 
more  and  more  they  will  have  nothing  but  will 
power  to  hold  them  together  and  make  them 
move  forward;  all  power  of  desire  and  response 
will  dry  up;  nothing  will  be  left  but  self-destruc- 
tive and  destructive  irony. 

Note:  The  editors  have  pointed  out  to  me  how  many 
important  writers  I  have  ignored.  Some,  Kingsley 
Amis,  George  Orwell,  F.  R.  Leavis,  I  regard  as  on  my 
side.  Some,  like  Elizabeth  Bowen,  Ivy  Compton- 
Burnett,  L.  P.  Hartley,  belong  to  the  glittering  train 
of  talent  pronged  by  Greene  and  Waugh.  Dylan 
Thomas,  as  far  as  England  is  concerned,  fits  into  the 
pigeonhole  "genius,"  which  is  a  sort  ol  emasculation 
chamber;  genius  is  related  to  responsibility  and 
trustworthiness  only  by  antithesis.  And  there  are 
many  I  don't  know  about,  or  don't  take  seriously. 
But  the  biggest  part  of  my  answer  refers  to  writers 
like  Joyce  Cary,  P.  H.  Newby,  C.  P.  Snow,  or  for 
that  matter  E.  M.  Forster,  all  of  whom  have  qualities 
and  interests  which  cannot  be  included  in  my  cate- 
gories. The  answer  is  that  their  differences  are  non- 
significant. They  are  merely  different,  merely  not 
typical  themselves;  they  accept  the  dominant  type 
as  dominant.  I  don't  say  they  may  not  be  acutely 
critical  of  it;  Forster  obviously  is;  but  he  can't,  cre- 
atively, imagine  any  alternative.  These  writers  don't 
represent  a  new,  vigorous  life-direction.  Consequently 
they  are  neither  for  nor  against  the  old  direction, 
and  in  an  analysis  like  this  they  are  subsidiary,  sub- 
ordinate. 


The  British  xuay  of  life  is  going  tlirough  a  change— perhaps  the  most  disruptive  change  in 
two  centuries.  As  Mr.  Green's  article  suggests,  tlie  moral  and  intellectual  leadership  of 
the  traditional  ridling  class  is  now  being  seriously  challenged  for  the  first  time,  and  from 
many  sides.  One  assault  party  is  "The  Angry  Young  Men"— a  group  of  writers  such  as 
John  Osborne,  Kingsley  Amis,  John  Wain,  and  Kenneth  Tynan.  An  entirely  different  group 
is  questioning  the  management  of  that  sacred  institution,  The  Royal  Family.  And  re- 
cent   by-elections    have    indicated    a    spreading  disgust  with  both  the  major  parties. 

The  underlying  causes—so  far  almost  unreported  in  this  country— are  diagnosed  with  a 
sharp  scalpel  by  Norman  MacKenzie  in  "The  English  Disease"  which  will  appear  in  an 
early  issue.— The  Editors 


By  ALVIN   L.    SCHORR 

Drawings  by  Sheila  Greenwald 


Families  on  Wheels 


How  do  trailer  families  live?  What  keeps 

them  on  the  move?  What  kinds  of  citizens  do 

they  make?  A  man  who  has  worked  with  them 

and  knows  them  gives  surprising  answers. 

THERE  is  a  little  poem  in  Clarence  Day's 
Thoughts  Without  Words  which,  when  it 
was  written,  must  have  struck  many  American 
men  as  singularly  apt.  It  goes  as  follows: 

Who  drags  the  fiery  artist  down? 
Who  keeps  the  pioneer  in  town? 
Who  hates  to  let  the  seaman  roam? 
It  is  the  wife.    It  is  the  home. 

Today,  however,  neither  the  contemporary 
wife  nor  the  contemporary  home  answers  to  this 
complaint.  The  wife  travels  as  far  and  as  fast 
as  her  husband,  and  home  is  where  they  find 
themselves,  frequently  in  the  compact  epiarters 
of  a  trailer  hitched  to  the  back  of  the  family  car. 

The  total  number  of  "trailer  families"  in 
America  today  has  been  estimated  at  upwards 
of  one  million— two  out  of  every  three  families 
where  the  husband  is  a  construction  worker  or 
overseer.  My  own  contact  with  some  of  them 
began  in  February  1954  when  the  Atomic  Energy 
Commission  began  to  build  a  uranium-separa- 
tion plant,  to  cost  one  and  a  quarter  billion 
dollars,  in  southern  Ohio's  Pike  County. 

With  the  plant's  peak  employment  estimated 


at  26,000,  and  adding  in  the  workers'  families 
and  new  businessmen  and  professionals  who 
would  be  drawn  to  the  region,  we  estimated  that 
the  population  of  the  "atomic  area"— 180,000  in 
1950— would  very  nearly  double.  Fearful  of  what 
this  could  mean  both  to  the  community  and  the 
newcomers,  the  Family  Service  Association  of 
America  sent  in  a  staff  to  set  up  a  family-counsel- 
ing service. 

We  brought  with  us  the  popular  assumption 
that  a  family's  movement  from  one  place  to 
another  is  either  itself  caused  by  or  causes  dis- 
turbed family  relationships.  And  we  came  to 
Pike  County  grimly  prepared  to  do  our  best  to 
cope  with  titanic  physical  problems,  and,  still 
more  sinister,  with  an  astronomically  rising 
divorce,  delinquency,  and  crime  rate. 

As  it  turned  out,  only  our  expectations  of  the 
physical  difficulties  were  confirmed.  New  houses, 
new  sewage  systems,  new  water  supplies,  and 
new  roads  were  desperately  and  immediately 
needed.  At  the  same  time  that  more  and  more 
people  were  trying  to  drive,  more  and  more  high- 
ways were  being  torn  up  and  relaid.  Communi- 
ties of  only  a  few  hundred  inhabitants  found 
themselves  passing  half-million-dollar  bond  issues 
for  schools,  hospitals,  water,  and  sewage  plants. 
Mud  and  dust  settled  over  the  countryside  as 
housing  went  up  and  sewers  went  down. 

But  in  the  two  years  that  our  service  was  in 
operation  in  the  area,  only  250  families  sought 
our  help— no  more  than  a  new  agency's  limited 
staff  in   any  established   community   might   see. 


Tl 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


And  their  problems  were  almost  identical  with 
the  problems  the  Family  Service  Association 
meets  most  often  in  its  260  member  agencies 
throughout  the  country— husband-wife  and 
parent-child  relationships,  economic  difficulties, 
individual  personality  adjustment  problems,  and 
physical  illness,  in  that  order.  Furthermore, 
there  were  as  many  old-timers  as  newcomers 
among  the  250.  The  only  families  whose  prob- 
lems could  accurately  be  said  to  have  been  caused 
by  their  moving  were  the  lew  who  ran  out  of 
money  because  of  illness,  unemployment,  or 
accident  and  who,  since  they  were  in  a  strange 
community,  had  no  friends  to  turn  to. 

It  was  the  construction  workers,  the  true 
transients,  who  interested  us  most.  Local  busi- 
nessmen discovered,  to  their  frank  surprise,  that 
they  were  good  credit  risks  with  a  strong  sense 
of  community  pride.  After  a  yevu  and  a  half  the 
Court  divorce  investigator  in  Ross  County,  which 
adjoins  Pike,  could  recall  only  three  trailer 
families  out  of  the  hundred  or  more  petitioning 
for  divorce  whom  she  had  investigated.  Police 
officers  and  juvenile-court  judges  found  some 
crime  and  some  delinquency  among  them,  but 
they  were  unanimously  impressed  by  how  little 
there  was.  As  one  judge  put  it,  "It's  not  the 
trailer  children  but  our  own  who  are  giving 
us  the  trouble." 

Nor  was  this  region  peculiarly  lucky  in  its 
experience.  All  over  the  country  the  same  pat- 
tern has  been  repeating  itself.  In  Bucks  County, 
Pennsylvania,  for  example,  where  a  large  popu- 
lation influx  accompanied  the  Delaware  Valley 
industrial  development,  Don  J.  Hager,  a  sociolo- 
gist, observed,  "The  mobile  families  possess 
characteristics  that  are  generally  prized  by  all 
American  communities— sobriety,  occupational 
skill  and  reliability,  family  stability,  and  a 
genuine  interest  in  contributing  to  and  improv- 


ing the  community  in  which  they  live."  After  a 
study  ol  young  management  families  in  Park 
Forest,  Illinois;  Levittown,  Pennsylvania;  and 
similar  communities,  William  II.  VVhyte,  Jr., 
author  of  The  Organization  Mem,  wrote  in 
Fortune:  "Profound  as  the  consequences  of  mo- 
bility have  been,  the  one  most  expected  has  not 
come  about.  The  transients  are  not  plagued  by 
instability  and  loneliness."  And  the  Girl  Scouts 
of  America,  who  have  been  experimenting  with 
special  ways  ol  bringing  Scouting  to  mobile 
lainilies,  declared  in  their  annual  report  for 
1953,  "In  a  way  [these  families]  are  vagabonds, 
but  never  have  vagabonds  been  so  constructive, 
so  self-sufficient,  and  so  secure  financially." 

WHY    PEOPLE    MOVE 

TH  E  construction  workers  who  poured 
into  Pike  County  came  from  all  over  the 
country,  sent  mostly  either  by  unions  or  by  state 
employment  services— a  happy  arrangement 
which  brought  only  workmen  with  the  necessary 
skills.  In  general  they  were  young  families,  with 
a  high  proportion  of  small  children.  The  vast 
majority  lived  in  trailers  which  they  set  up  with 
speedy  efficiency  in  privately  run  trailer  parks. 
Many  had  been  moving  regularly  from  one  job 
to  another,  some  for  as  long  as  twenty  years. 

We  social  workers  were  curious  as  to  why  a 
family  would  choose  to  live  in  this  way.  The 
first,  obvious  answer  we  got  was  the  high  hourly 
pay  and  the  large  amount  of  overtime.  An 
itinerant  construction  worker,  we  found,  may 
earn  twice  as  much  as  a  settled  employee  with 
the  same  skill.  A  second  advantage  is  the  chance 
to  advance  more  quickly.  We  were  struck  by  the 
considerable  number  of  responsible  positions 
which  were  held  by  comparatively  young  men, 
and  some  of  them  told  us  that  they  had  delib- 
erately chosen  a  mobile  life  in  order  to  get 
experience  at  a  level  which  it  would  normally 
have  taken  them  years  to  reach. 

But  neither  of  these  reasons  seemed  to  us 
sufficient  to  explain  the  phenomenon.  Higher 
pay  can  be  balanced,  and  overbalanced,  by  the 
high  cost  of  living  in  a  construction  area.  Lay- 
offs between  jobs  and  the  expense  of  moving 
must  also  be  taken  into  account.  Trailer  living 
itself  is  not  so  cheap  as  it  appears  at  first  glance. 
Parking  in  a  trailer  park  costs  perhaps  $35  a 
month  for  water,  electricity,  and  other  services. 
The  trailer  itself  represents  an  investment  up- 
wards of  $6,000  and  has  a  life  expectancy  of  five 
years.  The  car  which  pulls  the  trailer  has  more 
than   an   ordinary   rate  of  depreciation.    There 


FAMILIES     ON     WHEELS 


73 


must,  we  ielt,  be  other  considerations  beyond 
money  and  experience  involved  in  these  families' 
decision  to  live  this  kind  of  life,  and  slowly  we 
came  to  discover  what  they  were. 

They  varied,  of  course,  with  individual 
families.  I  talked  to  one  man  who  had  made 
the  grand  circuit  for  over  a  decade— Los 
Alamos;  Hanford,  Washington;  Savannah  River, 
Georgia;  Paducah,  Kentucky;  and  southern 
Ohio.  At  one  point,  he  told  me,  he  decided  to 
settle  down  with  his  wife  and  two  children  in 
Mansfield,  Ohio.  He  had  a  good  job,  was  start- 
ing to  make  friends,  and  beginning  to  pay  off 
the  mortgage  on  a  house.  Then  he  realized  that 
he  was  getting  tied  tighter  and  tighter  to  his 
job.  If  he  was  treated  badly,  or  didn't  like  what 
he  was  given  to  do,  he  would  have  to  think  about 
the  costs  of  giving  it  up— the  loss  of  his  house 
and  friends,  the  cutting  of  commitments  he  and 
his  family  would  have  made.  He  went  back  to 
construction.  In  construction,  he  said,  if  you 
didn't  like  it,  you  could  pick  up  your  check  and 
leave. 

Another  man  who  puzzled  me  because  he  was 
pulling  out  of  the  Pike  County  project  while 
there  was  still  plenty  of  work  and  plenty  of 
overtime  explained,  "A  year  is  all  we  stay  in  one 
place."  He  couldn't  add  much  to  this,  but  as 
we  talked  I  got  the  impression  that  after  a  year 
he  and  his  wife  got  bored  and,  anticipating  some 
kind  of  personal  difficulty  between  themselves, 
preferred  to  be  busy  getting  used  to  a  new  place. 

According  to  Dr.  Jules  V.  Coleman,  clinical 
professor  of  psychiatry  at  the  Yale  School  of 
Medicine,  people  may  move  "because  they  hope 
to  find  a  more  comfortable  place  in  the  sun,  or 
because  they  are  reaching  for  the  moon.  They 
may  move  because  they  hate  where  they  are  and 
feel  any  other  place  would  be  better;  or  they 
are  afraid  to  stay  where  they  are,  feeling  another 
place  would  be  safer.  They  may  think  of  them- 
selves as  running  away  from  a  world  they  experi- 
ence as  cramping,  stifling,  limiting,  or  hostile; 
or  moving  toward  freedom,  adventure,  security." 

Many  new  families  in  Pike  County  confessed 
to  me  that  they  felt  like  pioneers.  Or,  as  an 
engineer  on  the  project  put  it,  "It  gets  in  your 
blood.   You  get  used  to  seeing  things  building." 

Escape  is  a  powerful  factor  in  some  families' 
decision  to  move— escape  from  an  unsuccessful 
job,  from  the  tedium  of  everyday  life,  or  from 
a  smoldering  problem  in  marital  relations. 
Escape  as  a  device  for  dealing  with  problems  is 
generally  frowned  upon  today.  But,  as  Dr.  Cole- 
man sees  it,  people  who  escape  may  also  be 
making  an  attempt  to  come  to  terms  with  their 


problems,  "to  begin  to  set  the  stage  for  a  life 
that  would  be  meaningful  to  them  in  their  own 
way.  .  .  .  Looked  at  in  this  way,"  he  continues, 
"they  appear  as  the  bolder  spirits,  seekers  and 
strivers,  expressing  their  discontent  with  lives 
of  fitful  dissatisfaction,  if  not  of  complete 
desperation,  with  a  step  of  positive  affirmation 
toward  creative  self-realization." 

To  be  sure,  there  is  a  kind  of  pathological 
family,  well  known  to  social  agencies,  churches, 
and  police  stations  across  the  country,  which  we 
social  workers  call  mobile-dependent— that  is, 
the  family  whose  dominant  pattern  is  escape. 
They  never  seem  to  make  much  progress,  they 
depend  on  the  generosity  of  whatever  community 
they  find  themselves  in,  and  when  reactions  to 
them  become  less  generous  and  more  question- 
ing than  they  were  at  first,  they  move  on.  My 
colleague,  Mrs.  Martha  Van  Valen,  made  a  study 
of  a  half-dozen  of  these  families  who  turned  up 
in  southern  Ohio.  Interestingly  enough,  one  of 
her  conclusions,  later  published  in  a  professional 
journal,  was:  "There  was  little  discernible  con- 
flict within  the  family  unit.  The  husband's 
authority  was  unquestioned,  and  family  ties  were 
exceedingly  close." 

These  families  are  a  good  bit  of  trouble  to 
each  community  they  are  in,  they  are  usually 
desperately  poor,  their  children  are  always  dirty 
and  frequently  hungry.  Nevertheless,  in  Mrs. 
Van  Valen's  and  my  experience,  they  struggle 
frantically  to  remain  a  family,  and  mobility  helps 
them  to  achieve  this.  If  they  did  not  continue  to 
move,  it  is  very  likely  that  their  problems  would 
intensify  and  the  family  itself  would  break  up. 

One  reason,  I  think,  that  mobility  is  so  often 
blamed  for  insecurity,  divorce,  delinquency,  and 
other  social  ills  is  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing 
between  many  factors  in  a  single  situation. 
Poverty  and  the  breakdown  of  family  relation- 
ships, for  example,  are  better  nominees  as  causes 
for  a  high  crime  rate  in  the  center  of  some  cities 
than  mobility,  which  is  also  characteristic  of  the 
population  of  these  areas.  Family  separation 
puts  more  of  a  strain  on  servicemen  than  the 
mobility  which  is  also  their  lot. 


74 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


In  any  case,  the  fact  remains  that  American 
l.imilies  today,  by  and  large,  are  on  the  move. 
The  trailer  families  continually  shifting  from 
one  community  to  another  arc  merely  the  ex- 
treme of  a  general  trend.  At  a  meeting  in 
Columbus,  Ohio,  not  long  ago  I  was  discussing 
this  situation  with  a  group  of  sociologists.  One 
of  them  elaborated  a  theory  that  increased 
mobility  has  resulted  in  shallow  relationships 
and  is  responsible  for  a  number  of  social  prob- 
lems. As  I  listened  to  him  I  got  the  uncom- 
fortable feeling  that  he  was  not  talking  about 
real  people  and  I  suggested  a  parlor  game  which 
interested  me  greatly  at  the  time.  Each  of  us 
present  told  how  long  we  had  been  living  in 
the  city  of  our  residence.  Our  average  length 
of  stay  turned  out  to  be  just  under  two  years. 

Last  year  33,100,000  Americans  changed  their 
residence.  The  majority  of  them  moved  from 
one  place  to  another  in  the  same  county  or 
helped  to  swell  the  great  exodus  from  city  to 
suburbs.  But  about  5,800,000  moved  to  another 
county,  and  over  five  million  more  crossed  state 
lines.  These  figures  fluctuate  from  year  to  year, 
but  for  the  past  decade  they  have  been  moving 
steadily  upward.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  one  little 
girl,  settling  down  with  her  family  in  a  suburb 
of  Washington,  rushed  in  to  report  excitedly  to 
her  mother,  "Guess  what,  the  girl  next  door  is 
from  1 1  ere!" 


LOSS     OF     THE     HOME     TOWN 

TH  E  present  surge  of  American  families 
from  one  area  to  another  started  with  the 
second  world  war  and  its  aftermath,  and  several 
factors  helped  to  stimulate  it.  As  a  result  of  the 
GI-Bill  well  over  two  million  veterans  went  to 
college.  Often  they  chose  colleges  away  from 
where  their  homes  had  been.  They  learned  to 
know  new  parts  of  the  country  while  they  were 


studying,  and  they  acquired  skills  that  put  them 
into  nation-wide  competition  tor  the  jobs.  As  a 
result  the  job,  not  its  location,  became  their  pri- 
mary consideration. 

At  the  same  time  the  multi-million-dollar  in- 
vestment in  research,  development,  and  produc- 
tion which  the  war  inaugurated  with  the  Man- 
hattan Project  became  a  fixed  part  of  American 
life,  requiring  the  massing  and  dispersal  of 
thousands  ol  families.  Simultaneously  American 
industry  began  to  promote  mobility  by  sending 
its  promising  young  men  from  one  plant  to 
another  as  a  regular  part  of  their  progress  up 
the  ladder  of  advancement.  This  is  now  so 
accepted  a  practice  that  George  Fry  and  Asso- 
ciates, management  consultants,  concluded  in  a 
recent  study  that  the  ideal  executive's  wife  today 
must  be  adaptable  to  change  "in  location,  in 
environment,  and  in  attitude." 

Whether  by  coincidence  or  in  the  process  of 
adjusting  to  these  requirements,  America  is 
now  turning  out  families  especially  suited  to 
frequent  movement.  Raising  children  and  earn- 
ing a  living  are  still  the  family's  primary  func- 
tions, but  for  many  years  now  a  man's  home 
and  his  place  of  work  have  not  been  the  same, 
and  modern  women— as  soon  as  their  children 
are  in  school— are  frequently  out  of  the  house 
too.  Baby-sitting  has  become  so  familiar  a  con- 
cept that  it  is  a  shock  to  realize  it  is  only  a 
generation  old.  The  births,  deaths,  nursing, 
funerals,  and  teaching  that  once  took  place  in 
the  home  have  moved  to  the  hospital,  the 
mortuary,  and  the  school,  ft  is  far  less  important 
than  it  used  to  be  to  have  a  "home  town." 

The  contemporary  American  family  is  also 
smaller  than  the  typical  American  family  of  the 
past.  Although  the  number  of  children  is  cur- 
rently rising,  grandparents,  aunts,  and  uncles  are 
seldom  included  in  the  family  unit  any  more. 
But  as  if  to  compensate  for  all  that  the  family 
has  given  up,  there  has  been  an  increased 
emphasis  on  a  deep  and  strong  relationship 
among  the  members  who  remain.  "Together- 
ness" is  the  order  of  the  day,  with  competence 
no  longer  strictly  a  masculine  attribute  nor 
tenderness  strictly  a  woman's.  The  result  is  a 
family  which  is  small  and  flexible,  which  relies 
on  outside  institutions  for  many  of  its  needs, 
which  deepens  the  emotional  resources  within 
its  membership,  and  which  can,  as  a  result,  travel 
light  and  intact.  "The  hope  is,"  writes  Dr.  Paul 
Lemkau  of  the  New  York  City  Mental  Hygiene 
Bureau,  "that  stronger  relationships  in  the 
family  will  help  to  substitute  for  some  of  the 
ancient  attachments  to  places  and  things." 


FAMILIES     ON     WHEELS 


75 


There  are  other  factors,  too,  which  help 
mobile  families  make  satisfactory  lives  for  them- 
selves, and  I  observed  many  of  these  in  southern 
Ohio.  First  of  all,  even  though  they  are  strangers 
to  each  other,  mobile  families  often  find  them- 
selves in  situations  where  they  share  a  strong 
sense  of  group  unity.  Similarity  in  age,  a  com- 
mon interest  in  making  a  home  and  bringing  up 
children,  and  the  absence  of  nearby  family  con- 
tacts bring  mobile  families  together  wherever 
they  find  themselves.  In  some  areas,  similarity  in 
job  status  and  union  or  organization  loyalty  are 
powerful  cohesive  forces.  In  every  area  there 
is  a  shared  feeling  of  facing  problems  directly 
and  mastering  them.  When,  through  a  con- 
fusion in  names,  the  family-service  agency  in 
Pike  County  offered  an  appointment  to  a  woman 
who  had  not  asked  for  one,  she  replied  politely, 
"Thank  you,  but  we  do  not  have  any  problems 
that  could  not  be  solved  with  a  bulldozer." 

Secondly,  mobile  families  have  learned  to 
identify  quickly  with  the  communities  to  which 
they  move.  I  was  astounded  to  see  how  rapidly 
the  trailer  families  in  Ohio  began  to  cultivate 
the  little  twelve-by-fifty-foot  plots  of  ground 
allotted  to  them  in  the  trailer  court.  Neat  wooden 
fences  were  built  to  separate  the  individual  plots; 
grass  covered  the  bare  earth  inside  the  fences; 
flower  gardens  and  small  shrubs  sprang  up. 
Many  families  spread  large  awnings  over  a  patio, 
thereby  doubling,  in  mild  weather,  the  usable 
living  area.  In  a  few  months  or  a  year,  when  the 
family  moved  on,  all  this  would  have  to  be  aban- 
doned. Yet  the  families  considered  that  the 
investment  was  worth  it  for  the  added  personal 
and  social  comforts  it  brought. 

Each  family,  according  to  its  inclinations, 
joined  the  local  Parent-Teachers  Association, 
the  Newcomers  Club,  the  Civic  Association,  or 
some  other  group  whose  interests  matched  its 
own.  And  this  settling  in  from  the  beginning, 
living  as  if  the  new  community  were  to  be  a  life- 
time home,  seems  to  be  the  typical  approach  of 
mobile  families  who  make  out  well. 

Much  has  been  made— often  by  people  who 
have  not  studied  the  facts  at  hand— of  the  dam- 
age frequent  or  constant  moving  can  do  to  grow- 
ing children.  Data  need  to  be  collected  on  this 
point,  but  in  my  experience,  if  the  parents  have 
come  to  terms  with  the  fact  that  they  are  mobile, 
and  make  no  apologies  for  it  either  to  them- 
selves or  to  others,  young  children  accept  moves 
as  an  expected  and  even  welcome  way  of  life. 
(Adolescents  are,  of  course,  another  matter.)  One 
of  the  men  in  southern  Ohio,  I  remember,  quit 
when  the  construction  was  nearing  completion, 


although  his  particular  job  would  have  lasted 
for  some  time.  At  least  one  reason,  he  said,  was 
that  his  six-year-old  boy  kept  pointing  out  that 
the  job  was  near  the  end  and  asking  him  why 
they  weren't  moving  on.  All  the  boy's  friends 
were  leaving,  and  he  wanted  to  go  somewhere 
else  and  make  new  friends. 


WESTWARD     HO 
WITH    A    DIFFERENCE 

IT  I S  often  said  that  the  family  mobility  we 
are  seeing  today  is  merely  an  extension  of  the 
mobility  which  has  always  been  a  characteristic 
of  the  United  States.  This  is  true  only  to  a  point. 
The  covered-wagon  families  that  settled  our 
frontier  were  large  families  who  carried  their 
civilization  with  them  and  who  went  to  stay. 
The  modern  family  depends  on  finding  civiliza- 
tion—schools, hospitals,  social  services— where  it 
goes,  or  on  having  the  community  organize  to 
provide  it.  And  it  is  geared  to  many  moves  rather 
than  merely  one. 

The  population  movement  of  the  mid-nine- 
teenth century  which  built  the  railroads,  logged 
the  forests,  and  opened  the  mines  was  a  move- 
ment of  single  men,  first-generation  immigrants 
mostly.  Those  who  had  families  left  them  behind 
and  took  these  jobs  because  they  could  find  no 
others.  "Bad  'cess  to  the  luck  that  brought  me 
through  to  work  upon  the  railway,"  ran  one  of 
their  popular  songs.  It  takes  a  different  order  of 
incentive  to  attract  the  skilled  people  who  staff 
our  modern  industries  and  services. 

According  to  Census  Bureau  studies,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  today,  the  family  moves  as  a 
unit.  And  it  is  the  age  group  from  eighteen  to 
thirty-five  that  tends  to  move  most  often.  Per- 
haps in  part  because  of  this  age  factor,  families 


MAN-MADE  INDUSTRIAL  DIAMONDS: 


From  a  research  laboratory  project  \i 
1955  ...  a  promisin'g  new  business  \i 
1957.  Tiny  man-made  diamonds  (shovJ 
above,  mounted  on  a  needle)  were  a  labj 
ratory  achievement  two  years  ago.  Todai 
General  Electric  is  producing  diamond 
in  quantity  at  a  pilot  plant  in  Detroil 


Charles  Koebel  is  president  of  the  Koebel  Z> 
mond  Tool  Co.,  one  o)  many  firms  assured  op 
continuous  supply  of  diamond  abrasive  produi. 

Customers  get  new  values  from  research  ;|8 
development.  More  than  one-third  of  all  Genflfl 
Electric  products  now  being  made  for  hcB 
and  industry  did  not  even  exist  15  years  a|». 


J 


The  making  of  diamonds  by  General   Electric  is  one  example  of 
how  research  and  development  accelerate  the  nation's  progress 


Two  years  ago,  General  Electric  un- 
veiled tiny  man-made  diamonds— iden- 
tical with  nature's  —  as  a  "laboratory 
achievement."  Today  a  pilot  plant  is  pro- 
ducing these  diamonds  in  significant 
quantity  for  industrial  use. 

Industrial  diamonds  are  critical  to 
America's  productive  strength,  for  they 
are  needed  to  cut,  grind,  polish,  and  ma- 
chine metals  used  in  defense  equipment 
and  civilian  goods.  Now,  the  United 
States  can  look  forward  to  the  time  when 
it  will  not  have  to  rely  entirely  upon  a 
closely  controlled  foreign  supply. 

A  result  of  basic  research 

This  breakthrough  was  made  in  the 
General  Electric  Research  Laboratory, 
where  scientists  were  searching  for  fun- 
damental   knowledge    about    heat    and 


super-pressures.  After  four  years  of  re- 
search and  experimentation— and  dupli- 
cation of  the  "squeeze"  240  miles  inside 
the  earth— these  scientists  produced  dia- 
monds identical  in  every  way  with  those 
dug  from  the  earth. 

This  discovery  was  taken  up  by  de- 
velopment engineers  at  our  Metallurgi- 
cal Products  Department  in  Detroit;  in 
two  years  they  translated  the  laboratory 
achievement  into  a  useful  product,  pro- 
duced in  quantity  and  at  a  cost  low 
enough  for  commercial  application. 

Importance  of  profits  to  research 

At  General  Electric  today,  one  out  of 
every  13  people  is  a  scientist  or  engi- 
neer, and  the  work  of  research  and  de- 
velopment is  "carried  on  in  98  labora- 
tories. In  fact,  we  are  currently  investing 


over  three  times  as  much,  per  sales  dol- 
lar, in  research  and  development  as  the 
average  for  all  industry. 

Such  investments  in  research  and  de- 
velopment can,  of  course,  be  warranted 
only  when  there  is  opportunity  for  ade- 
quate profit.  Probing  the  scientific  un- 
known is  a  risky  and  uncertain  venture 
that  can  achieve  a  great  deab-or  nothing. 
One  of  the  important  functions  of  profit 
is  to  stimulate  those  ventures  which,  if 
they  turn  out  to  be  successful,  lead  to  the 
swiftest  progress. 

The  American  people,  by  encourag- 
ing local  and  national  policies  which 
provide  a  chance  for  earned  rewards 
can  stimulate  continued  high  levels  of 
research  and  development  .  .  .  and  thus 
assure  national  security  and  further 
progress  for  all  citizens. 


T^ogress  Is  Our  Most  Important  Product 


GENERAL 


ELECTRIC 


For  a  copy  of  an  address  by  Dr.  Guy  Suits, 
Vice  President  and  Director  of  Research  at 
General  Electric,  before  the  President's  Con- 
ference on  Research  for  the  Benefit  of  Small 
Business,  write Dept.  2J-1 19,  Schenectady, N. Y. 


ick  Mays,  an  employee  and  a  share  owner, 
is  a  better  job  — newly  created  at  General 
'ectric's  new  diamond-producing  pilot  plant. 

nployees  and  share  owners.  The  common 
terests  of  share  owners  and  employees  are 
rved  when  research  and  development  create 
ofitable  new  businesses  and  lead  to  new  jobs. 


Fred  Robinson  heads  the  English  &  Miller  Ma- 
chinery Co.,  which  supplies  General  Electric 
with  equipment  used  in  diamond  production. 

Small  businesses.  New  and  improved  products 
have  increased  the  number  of  General  Electric 
suppliers  to  over  42,000,  and  opened  business 
opportunities  for  400,000  independent  retailers. 


In  national  defense,  the  machining  of  metals  like 
those  needed  in  jet  aircraft  will  no  longer  de- 
pend solely  on  diamonds  available  from  abroad. 

All  citizens.  The  results  of  research  not  only 
help  keep  the  nation  strong  but,  like  Edison's 
discovery  of  the  electric  light  78  years  ago,  live 
on  and  continue  to  benefit  people  for  generations. 


78 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


with  children  are,  surprisingly,  more  likelx  to 
move  than  (host  without.  Each  year  about  one 
in  four  families  with  children  moves,  compared 
to  one  in  five  of  the  general  population  and  one 
in  seven  of  the  families  containing  adults  other 
than  the  married  couple.  The  chief  reason  for 
moving  is  so  that  wage-earners  can  take  another 
job,  and,  as  might  be  expected,  those  with  more 
education  tend  to  move  more  readih  than  those 
with  less.  Although  the  Western  part  of  the 
country  has  shown  the  greatest  population  gain 
and  the  South  the  greatest  loss  from  migration, 
the  movement  has  not  been  from  east  to  west  or 
south  to  north,  but  rather  back  and  forth  and 
around,  depending  on  individual  advantage  and 
preference. 

TlTe  impact  of  this  movement  has  already 
made  important  changes  in  our  social,  political, 
and  business  life.  It  has  shifted  the  political  bal- 
ance in  .many  areas,  given  new  significance  to 
trademarks  and  national  organizations  which 
people  can  recognize  wherever  they  are,  and 
dissolved  many  old  prejudices  in  the  solvent 
of  familiarity.  Rut  necessary  legal  changes- 
changes,  for  example,  which  would  prevent  six 
million  citizens  from  being  disenfranchised  as 
they  were  in  the  last  election,  because  they  had 
moved— are  a  great  deal  slower  in  coming. 

Paradoxically,  state  residence  laws  on  eligi- 
bility for  public  assistance  and  other  public 
welfare  programs  are  today  just  as  restrictive  as 
they  have  been  in  many  years— if  not  more  so. 
And  it  is  only  because  mobile  families  are 
usually  self-supporting  that  these  laws  have  been 
able  to  continue  for  so  long.  The  man  who  was 
asked  by  a  social  worker  to  name  his  home  state 
is  typical  of  many:  "Do  you  mean  where  I  was 
born,  where  I  live,  where  my  folks  live,  or  where 
I  last  voted?"  he  asked. 

Should  this  man  become  ill  or  unemployed, 


he  might  find  that  assistance  was  available  to 
him  only  in  some  place  he  had  left  long  before 
because  it  offeree!  him  no  opportunity— or  that 
no  assistance  at  all  was  available. 

Because  injustice  to  some  of  us  in  the  end 
concerns  all  of  us,  the  National  Travelers  Aid 
Association  last  \cai  adopted  this  statement  of 
principles:  "That,  as  a  matter  of  fundamental 
human  right,  an  individual  may  choose  the  place 
1  >c  st  suited  to  his  needs  as  his  place  of  residence: 
that  there  derives  from  this  the  right  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  move  freely  from  place  to  place  with- 
out hindrance  or  penalty;  that  a  person  who  lias 
exercised  the  right  of  lice  movement  should  be 
on  an  ecpial  looting  with  all  others;  that  human 
needs  such  as  food,  clothing,  shelter,  and  medical 
care  should  be  met  as  such,  regardless  of  whether 
the  pel  son  in  need  is  a  long-established  resident 
of  the  community,  a  newcomer  to  the  com- 
munity, or  in  transit  to  some  other  place.  .  .  ." 

Not  ever)  American  family  moves  regularly, 
frequently,  or  at  all,  but  every  family  lives  in  an 
atmosphere  in  which  movement  is  normal  and 
possible.  This  is  a  significant  change  even  for 
the  families  which  do  not  move.  For  some  it 
creates  anxiety,  for  others  excitement,  and  for 
many,  as  they  face  moving,  a  combination  of 
both. 

Early  in  1954  the  New  York  Times  reported 
independent  speeches  by  Dr.  Margaret  Mead 
and  Dr.  Luther  Gulick  about  the  mobility  which 
results  in  the  meeting  of  different  cultures.  Its 
words  may  be  appropriate  for  American  family 
mobility  as  well.  "Both  Dr.  Mead,  the  Mela- 
nesian  anthropologist,  and  Dr.  Gulick,  the  city 
administrator,"  said  the  Times  story,  "hit  by 
chance  upon  a  common  conclusion— in  any  cul- 
ture, the  infusion  of  new  ideas  and  new  people 
disrupts  things  for  a  while,  but  it  is  beneficial 
in  the  long  run." 


After  Hours 


Sp&ss 


ONE     WAY 

TO    GET    ELECTED 

TEARING  down  old  build- 
ings is  usually  a  better  political 
gimmick  than  propping  them  up,  as 
Mayor  Lee  of  New  Haven,  about 
whom  Harper's  ran  a  piece  last  Oc- 
tober, has  demonstrated.  Mayor  Lee, 
whose  program  to  modernize  his  city 
has  leveled  a  good  many  disreputa- 
ble nineteenth-century  structures, 
won  in  November  by  the  largest  ma- 
jority ever  recorded  in  his  city. 

Precisely  the  opposite  happened 
in  Bridgeport,  Connecticut. 

Bridgeport,  which  is  less  than  half- 
an-hour  from  New  Haven  and  just 
about  the  same  size  (roughly  160,000 
residents),  has  for  the  last  twenty- 
fours  years  had  a  Socialist  mayor, 
Jasper  McLevy.  He  was  determined 
to  tear  down  a  Gothic  mansion  that 
was  left  to  the  city  a  few  years  ago 
by  a  prominent  and  rich  old  man 
named  Archer  C.  Wheeler.  Indeed 
he  had  started  to  whittle  away  at  it. 
He  had  removed  the  doorknobs  of 
the  house,  demolished  the  green- 
house, and  he  had  removed  some  of 
the  ornate  walnut  staircase,  and 
stored  it  away.  When  election  day 
came  Mayor  McLevy  found  that  he 
had  been  nosed  out  of  office  by  160 
votes.  The  man  who  beat  him,  Judge 
Samuel  Tedesco,  in  an  interview 
with  the  Bridgeport  Telegram  said 
that  there  were  just  two  factors  that 
he  thought  contributed  importantly 
to  his  election:  one  was  the  Italian 


,  the  other  the  Wheeler  Mansion 
ervation  Association. 

"The  Wheeler  people  helped  me," 
he  said.  "They  really  did.  ...  I  made 
a  deal  with  them.  If  I'm  elected,  I 
told  them  they  would  have  a  chance 
to  take  over  the  mansion  and  see  if 
they  could  get  enough  money  to 
run  it." 

The  Wheeler  mansion  is  a  splen- 
did Gothic  Revival  house  designed 
by  Alexander  Jackson  Davis  and 
built  in  1846  for  a  prosperous  saddle 
maker,  Henry  K.  Harral,  who  subse- 
quently sold  it  to  the  Wheeler 
family.  Davis,  whose  reputation 
along  with  that  of  most  of  our  early 
nineteenth-century  architects  has 
been  buried  under  a  general  reaction 
against  American  Victorianism,  is 
now  being  justifiably  revived.  He 
was  one  of  our  most  distinguished 
and  versatile  architects  in  the 
decades  just  before  the  Civil  War, 
and  it  was  he  and  his  friend  the 
landscape  architect  and  writer, 
Andrew  Jackson  Downing,  who  con- 
vinced a  great  many  of  their  con- 
temporaries that  the  Gothic  style  was 
eminently  suited  to  the  American 
landscape.  There  was  a  clean  ele- 
gance about  his  buildings  which— 
unfortunately  for  the  looks  of  the 
landscape— very  few  of  his  followers 
achieved.  The  Wheeler  mansion  is 
certainly  one  of  the  handsomest 
domestic  buildings  of  its  time  and 
one  of  the  truly  fine  houses  in  the 
country. 

Archer  C.  Wheeler  died  at  the  age 
of  ninety-two  in  1956  and  left  the 
house  to  the  city  of  Bridgeport.  In 
his  will  he  said  that  it  was  his  "de- 
sire" that  it  be  used  as  a  museum  or 


library  or  as  classrooms  for  an  ad- 
joining high  school.  The  Wheeler 
family  had  taken  great  care  to  pre- 
serve the  mansion  inside  as  well  as 
out  in  its  original  style  of  elegant 
Victorianism,  and  the  house  was 
known  as  "Walnut  Wood"  because 
of  its  elaborately  carved  walnut 
staircase.  Mayor  McLevy  had  other 
notions  about  how  the  property 
could  best  serve  the  city.  He  wanted 
to  tear  the  house  down  and  on  its 
site  erect  a  nine-million-dollar  city 
hall.  A  little  distant  howl  went  up 
from  a  few  local  citizens,  some  archi- 
tectural historians,  and  a  few  others 
interested  in  preserving  the  monu- 
ments of  the  past.  But,  politically 
speaking,  it  was  unfortunate  that  a 
good  many  of  those  who  opposed 
razing  the  building  were  not  local 
people.  It  must  have  seemed  to  most 
folk,  as  it  most  surely  seemed  to 
Mayor  McLevy,  like  a  lost  cause 
from  the  start. 

He  underestimated  the  fighting 
spirit  of  a  group  of  preservationists 
at  bay.  They  fought  cleverly,  openly, 
and  with  all  of  the  usual  methods, 
including  legal  ones.  They  organized 
a  committee;  they  elicited  the  sup- 
port of  Richard  Howland,  president 
of  the  National  Trust  for  Historic 
Preservation.  They  corralled  the 
Society  of  Architectural  Historians, 
the  Antiquarians  and  Landmarks  So- 
ciety of  Connecticut,  and  the  Con- 
necticut League  of  Historical  Socie- 
ties. They  even  got  to  Governor 
Ribicoff.  Articles  appeared  in  An- 
tiques and  in  Time. 

Several  people  risked  their  city 
jobs  to  rally  support  for  the  house. 
Elizabeth  Seeley,  curator  of  Bridge- 


80 

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AFTER     HOURS 


port's  little  Barnum  Museum,  worked 
furious!)  to  snatch  the  building 
Iroin  her  boss,  the  mayor.  Raymond 
Buzak,  a  teachei  <>l  English  in  the 
high  school  behind  the  Wheeler 
House,  urged  his  pupils  to  write 
letters  to  the  local  papers  protesting 
the  demolition.  Before  election  day 
he  had  with  his  wile's  help  collected 
7,000  signatures  on  a  petition  to  save 
the  building.  Mrs.  John  W.  Richard- 
son, regent  of  the  DAR,  got  support 
and  statements  from  architectural 
historians  and  then  broadcast  them 
in  an  energetic  mailing  program. 
(Mayor  McLevy  is  reported  to  have 
said  of  the  fuss  about  the  house, 
"It's  all  Mrs.  Richardson's  and  Miss 
Seeley's  fault.'-) 

Two  men  from  Fairfield,  a  nearby 
town,  Ernesl  Hillman,  Jr.  and  John 
Skilton,  put  up  $1,500  to  pay  for  a 
lawyer  to  represenl  the  Association 
as  i  "friend  of  the  court"  at  the 
hearings  on  tinkering  with  Wheeler's 
will,  but  the  courl  found  in  M<- 
Levy's  favor.  In  the  last  Hurry  before 
election  ten  thousand  letters  signed 
by  Mr.  Hillman  and  other  members 
of  the  Association  (by  hand)  went 
to  what  Mary  Lohmann  (the  mem 
ber  of  the  committee  who  has  told 
me  all  about  this)  called  "the 
Socialist-voting  hotbeds  of  Bridge- 
port." Twenty-five  thousand  re- 
prints of  the  article  from  Time  were 
also  seni  to  voters,  some  of  them 
with  a  message  in  Hungarian  printed 
on  it  for  the  Hungarian  population 
of  the  city.  Two  days  before  election 
half-page  advertisements  appeared  in 
the  Herald  and  in  the  Post,  in  spite 
of  advice  of  the  papers  that  the  cause 
u  as  a  lost  one. 

The  Bridgeport  election  was  three- 
cornered.  The  Association  with  ta<  i 
and  sophistication  backed  both  the 
Republican  and  Democratic  candi- 
dates opposing  McLevy,  which 
meant  that  they  could  attack  their 
antagonisl  and  be  bipartisan  at  the 
same  time.  "McLevy's  24-year  DIC- 
rATORSHIP  WILL  END  TUESDAY.  RE- 
PLACE HIM  WITH  COCCO  OR  Tedesco" 
said  their  ad  at  the  foot  of  a  recital 
of  the  facts  about  the  fight  to  pie- 
serve  the  mansion. 

Nobody  quite  believes,  I  gather, 
thai  the  efforts  and  strategy  ol  the 
committee  have  worked.  The  house 
has  been  saved.  The  new  Mayor  said 
the  day  after  his  election  thai  his 
first  official  ac  i  alter  being  sworn  in 


will  be  to  walk  Lhrough  the  Wheeler 
mansion    with    ten   ol    the    Wheeler  1 
Mansion     Preservation     Association 
members,  trailing  reporters  from  the 
local   papers,   and    led    by    James  G. 
Van    Dei  pool,   past    president   ol    the  • 
Architectural  Historians.    Ibis  is  the 
end  of  chapter  one  in   the    Vssocia-  | 
(ion's  fight. 

Chapter  two  will  be  less  dramatic.  ( 
When  Mr.  Wheeler  left  the  house  to 
the   city   he   also   left    $40,000   as   an  j 
endowment  to  maintain  it.    Hut  this,  | 
even  il  it  can  be  recovered  from  the 

estate,  is  not  going  to  be  enough.  ; 
The  Association  feels  it  needs  a  total 
endowment  of  about  $250,000,  not 
only  to  restore  the  house  to  its  pre- 
McLevy  stale  but  to  maintain  it  as  a 
museum  and  make  il  otherwise  use- 
ful as  a  civic  center.  "It  would  have 
been  easier,"  Mrs.  Lohmann  said  to 
me,  "to  have  done  a  thing  like  this 
in  New  Haven  than  in  Bridgeport 
which  is  an  entirely  industrial  city." 
Perhaps  it  would,  but  however  slim 
the  margin  by  which  the  building 
was  saved,  Bridgeport  has  reason  to 
be  pleased  with  the  stout  defenders 
of  the  heritage  of  American  archi- 
tecture, and  with  its  own  good  sense. 

A     BLOW     FOR     LIBERTY 

LIKE  other  sentimentalists, 
I've  always  had  a  private  pic- 
ture of  the  whiskey  business.  Some- 
where in  Kentucky,  tucked  away  in 
a  hill  cove,  was  a  set  ol  weathered 
buildings  where  an  old-time  distiller, 
with  the  inherited  wisdom  ol  his 
craft,  produced  small  quantities  of 
such  bourbon  as  you  nor  I  ever 
tasted.  Aged  eight  years  or  more 
and  handled  with  loving  care,  it  was 
then  consumed  only  by  those  in- 
formed enough  to  have  discovered 
it— and  not  by  clods  like  us. 

Hut  tin's  fantasy,  among  so  many 
others,  has  suffered  a  collision  with 
reality. 

Recently  I  passed  a  lew  days 
visiting  distilleries  in  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee,  and  I've  been  struggling 
since  to  repair  my  illusions.  It  isn't 
necessarily  true  that  the  oldest  is  the 
best,  either  in  the  companies  or  their 
product.  It  isn't  necessarily  true  that 
a  small  distill  ry  is  more  craftsman- 
like  than  a  large  one.  It  isn't  neces- 
sarily true  that  bonded  whiskey  is 
better  than  straight,  or  even  that  the 
best  bourbon  comes  from  Kentucky. 


AFTER     HOURS 

And  it  certainly  isn't  true  that  the 
inhabitants  of  the  state,  colonels  in- 
cluded, drink  better  whiskey  than 
you  can  get  elsewhere  in  the  country. 

The  whiskey  business,  in  the  first 
place,  is  very  discontented  in  Ken- 
tucky and  trying  as  fast  as  it  can  to 
get  out  (if  so  much  hadn't  been 
spent  to  advertise  "Kentucky"  bour- 
bon it  might  have  left  already).  The 
last  state  legislature  raised  the  pro- 
duction and  import  tax  on  whiskey 
from  five  to  ten  cents  a  gallon,  and 
the  cries  of  outrage  from  the  indus- 
try have  yet  to  die  down.  Many  com- 
panies are  moving  where  they  can, 
or  at  least  moving  their  warehouses 
to  Indiana,  and  others  are  simply 
closing.  Of  the  twelve  distilleries  in 
Nelson  County,  the  traditional  center 
of  bourbon-making,  only  four  are 
now  in  operation. 

This  is  not,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
new  phenomenon.  Whiskey  is  essen- 
tially a  by-product  of  farming,  and 
the  really  ridiculous  thing  about  it 
is  how  cheap  it  is  to  make.  As  a 
result,  making  it  has  always  been 
both  risky  and  remarkably  durable 
as  an  enterprise;  individuals  can 
easily  coin  millions  or  go  broke,  but 
the  industry  survives— it  survived 
even  the  Noble  Experiment.  And  it 
has  always  been  complaining  about 
taxes.  The  first  "true"  bourbon  is 
generally  agreed  to  have  been  pro- 
duced in  1789  by  a  Baptist  minister 
named  Elijah  Craig,  and  three  years 
later  the  Kentucky  distillers'  associa- 
tion met  to  protest  the  intolerable 
burden  of  "oppressive"  taxation. 

AND  not,  either,  that  bourbon  is 
unpopular.  It  has  indeed  been  un- 
dergoing a  moderate  boom,  at  least 
in  the  Northeast,  where  sales  in- 
creased 200  per  cent  last  year  and 
200  per  cent  the  year  before  that. 
There  are  various  theories  about 
this,  taking  account  of  the  decline  of 
rye  and  the  bad  name  acquired  by 
blends  just  after  the  war  and  certain 
other  imponderables;  but  there  is 
perhaps  a  simpler  explanation  to  be 
found  in  the  motivation  studies  of 
bourbon-drinking  in  Texas  prepared 
last  year  by  McCann-Erickson.  These 
showed  that  blends,  straight,  and 
bonded  were  generally  ranked  on  a 
scale  of  income  and  status  cor- 
responding roughly  to  their  prices— 
and,  well,  with  all  this  prosperity 
around    what    did    you    expect?     It 


The  CATHOLIC  Woman 
Is  Never  In  Doubt! 


The  Catholic  woman,  of  course,  has  the 
same  problems  of  living  that  other  wom- 
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But  she  is  never  in  doubt  as  to  how 
to  solve  them.  In  every  decision  she 
makes  .  .  .  large  and  small  .  .  .  whether 
they  occur  in  her  adolescence  or  later  on 
as  a  wife  and  mother  . . .  she  can  use  the 
clearly  defined  principles  of  her  Catholic 
Faith.  This,  some  will  say,  is  a  form  of 
"thought  control"  to  which  they  would 
not  submit.  By  the  same  reasoning,  the 
Bible  with  its  strict  commandments 
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called  a  form  of  thought  control. 

Women  generally,  of  course,  are  op- 
posed to  divorce.  Many  of  them  regard 
it  as  a  grave  social  evil.  Catholic  women 
not  only  share  this  view,  but  know  that 
according  to  God's  law,  divorce  with 
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Catholic  women  may  be  tempted,  at 
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But  the  Church  reminds  them  this  is  a 
violation  of  God's  law.  Likewise,  the 
obligation  to  provide  religious  training 
for  their  children  is  not  a  matter  of 
choice.  It  is  a  clear  duty. 

Sincere  people  of  all  faiths,  it  is  true, 
are  devoted  in  their  church  attendance 
and  conscious  of  their  need  to  worship 
God.  But  for  all  Catholics,  including 
women,  these  are  regular  obligations 
which  they  can  never  shirk.  Attendance 
at  Mass  on  Sundays  and  Holy  Days, 
Confession  and  Communion  at  least 
once  a  year,  and  fasting -and  abstinence, 
are  not  merely  religious  exercises  which 
a  Catholic  may  observe  or  ignore.  They 
constitute  elements  in  the  required 
Catholic  "way  of  life." 


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Catholics  gladly  choose  this  way  be- 
cause they  believe  that  the  Church... 
dating  down  the  centuries  from  Peter  to 
the  present  day  . . .  speaks  with  the  voice 
and  authority  of  Christ.  And  believing 
this,  they  are  never  in  doubt  concerning 
moral  and  spiritual  values  . . .  never  at  a 
loss  for  spiritual  assurance  and  help  for 
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82 

should  also  be  added  thai  35  to  40 
pei  i  cut  oi  industry  sales  as  a  w  hole 
take  place  around  Christmas-time, 
whi<  h  explains  .ill  those  de<  anters. 

( )li\  iouslj .  too,  iIk  i  c  is  a  good  bil 
dl  snobber)  involved  in  drinking 
bourbon,  but  I  mus(  admit  I  was 
relieved  to  disc  ovei  lnm  lm  l<  oi  it 
there  was  al  the  places  of  origin. 
Some  ol  the  distillers  seem  in  fa<  i 
to  gel  .i  quiel  amusemenl  oul  of  the 
ritualistic  superstitions  of  then  cus- 
tomers. 

"II  somebody  tells  you  he's  real 
pai  ii<  ulai ."  said  <ni<  ol  i hem,  "ask 
him  where  he  gets  his  ice  II  ii  isn'l 
fresh-made  oul  ol  distilled  water, 
he's  no  purist." 

Whiskey  is  .in  organi<  produc  i 
that  can  go  wrong  al  nearly  any 
point  in  iis  manufa<  ture,  and  an 
ability  to  pi<  k  up  odors  and  tastes  is 
aftei    ill  a  sunn  e  ol   its  \  ii  tue. 

"You  can  lake  lour  hundred  gal- 
lons ol  whiskey,"  .is  Reagor  IVIotlow 
oi  |.i(k  Daniel  ]>uts  it,  "drop  a  pine 
si  it  k  in  il  and  i  uin  it   jusl   like  that." 

Bul  the  quesl  ion  ol  w  h.u  makes 
one  bourbon  "better"  than  anothei 
is  far  more  (  oni|)li(  ated.  I  he  pi  od- 
ii(  I  is  made,  as  you  surely  know,  by 
lei  menting  a  mash  of  barley,  i  ye,  and 
corn  (mostly  corn)  and  then  distill- 
ing oul  the  whiskey,  cleai  and  color- 
less, at  over  100  proof.  This  is 
diluted  with  watei  and  stored  in 
(haired  oak  casks  for  a  number  of 
\c.os,  during  which  the  whiskey  ac- 
quires its  color  and  aroma  from  in- 
teracting with  the  wood  (the  casks, 
by  law,  can  only  be  used  one  e,  and 
il  you  can  figure  out  what  to  do 
with  them  al  lei  wards  a  fortune 
awaits  you  in  Kentucky).  Though 
the  whiskey  is  then  "cut"  with  dis- 
tilled water  before  being  bottled,  the 
quality  of  the  water  from  the  .start 
has  much  to  do  with  the  quality  of 
the  whiskey;  and  it  is  the  quality  of 
Kenni(k\  water  that  most  frequently 
appeals  among  the  explanations  of 
H  In    the  old-timers   located   here. 

Since  their  day  the  <  hemisti  \  of 
the  process  has  been  more  fully 
worked  out,  and  fermentation  seems 
to    take    place    jusl    as    ellce  1  i\  el\     in 

the  enormous  stainless-steel  cookers 
ol  the  big  distilleries  as  in  the  wood 
vats  of  the  smaller  ones.  The  big 
companies  point  out  thai  their  facili- 
ties allow  them  to  exercise  much 
greater  control  over  the  variables, 
such     as     temperature,     and     much 


AFTER     1 1  O  I   R  s 

in    the    pine  base   ol    l  aw 

matei  ials.     I  he  smallei   ones,  in   re 

ply,  adduce  know-how  and  devo- 
tion; but,  with  one  exception,  I'm 
inc  lined  to  doubl  that  the  advei  lis- 
ing  claims  foi  old-fashioned  methods 
are  wholly  serious,  \ltei  all,  the 
really  old-fashioned  bourbon  was 
whal  they  tailed  "hand-made,"  a 
small  tub  at  a  time,  and  according  to 
disi  illei  ( .h.u  les  I  homason  al  the 
Willei  Distilling  Company  in  bards- 
town,  one  of  the  lew  remaining 
three-generation  family  firms,  the 
lasi    "hand-made"    bourbon    he    can 

remember  was  in  190  1. 


THE  looks  of  a  small  distillery,  to 
the  visitor,  have  little  to  distinguish 
them.  I  he  most  (  onspic  uous  feal  m  e 
will  be  the  warehouses,  bulky  four- 
story  blocks  that  are  usually  surfaced 
with  gray  con  ugated  metal.  The  si  ill 
itsell  will  have  a  tower,  and  there  is 
likely  to  be  a  tall  thin  black  smoke- 
siai  k:  but  at  Insi  glanc  e  you  might 
easily  mistake  it  foi  a  sawmill.  Most 
of  the  distilleries  have  naturally  been 
built  or  rebuilt  since  Prohibition, 
and  there  is  not  a  great  deal  of  dif- 
ference in  their  major  items  ol 
equipment  or  manufacturing  proc- 
esses (minor  differences  ol  formula 
oi  technique,  however,  are  main). 
Quite  a  lew  have  been  bought  up  by 
outsiders  or  by  one  of  the  "big  lour" 
Seagram,  Schenley,  National,  or 
Hiram  Walker— without  causing 
noticeable  changes  in  practice. 

Whal  we  benighted  Easterners 
consider  lo  he  first-rate  bouillons 
.iic  equally  so  regarded  in  Kentucky. 
I  will  not  embarrass  our  advertisers 


by  playing  favorites  bin  will  simply 
say  that,  il  you  have  been  patroniS 
ing   one    ol    the-  dozen  odd    familial 

brands,  you  c  an  go  on  doing  so  with 
oul     regret.      |  I  he    word     "bonded,' 

however,  docs  nol  specifically  rera 
lo  quality;  it  means  only  thai  the 
whiskev  has  been  aged  loin  \cai' 
nuclei  govei  nine  in  bond  and  is  l<)( 
proof.)  The  kind  ol  whiskev  to  be 
found  in  much  greatei  variety  ii 
Ki  nine  k\  propei  is  straight  bourbon 
ol  lowei  piool  and  the  middle-price 
range,  similai  il  not  identical  to  the 
"house  brands"  thai  large  stores  anc 
distributors  markel  in  the  Easl  un 
der  theii  own  labels,  h  is  sole 
locally  under  names  that  are  familiaj 
lo    keniue  kians    but    have    nol,    be 

c ause  ol  the  small  distiller's  limite< 
iii.n  kei  ing  organization,  become  wel 
known  in  othei  parts.  \  briel  glance. 
at  the  Kentucky  Beverage  l<>inim. 
reveals  over  130  ol  them,  thirty  be 
ginning  with  the  word  "old,"  in 
eluding  Old  Hickory,  Old  Loj: 
Cabin,  Old  Mill  Stream,  Old  Joe 
and  Old    Tub. 

THE     "one    exception"    which 

meiil  ionecl  cai  lie!  is  also  an  e\c  e] 
lion  in  being  a  small  distiller's  bran 
with  a  national  reputation  as  one 
ol  the  best  of  bourbons.  It  is  noi 
bonded,  technically  nol  a  bourbor 
(the  mash  starts  with  a  differenl 
proportion  of  corn  to  other  grains) 
and  il  is  not  made  in  Kentucky,  bin 
otherwise  the  reputation  is  earned 
I  refer  ol  course  to  Jack  Daniel's 
which  is  a  corn  whiskey  made  ii 
Lynchburg,  Tennessee,  by  a  uniqu( 
piocess  ol  libeling  the  new  whiskcx 
from  the  still  through  charcoal  be 
fore  il  is  barreled.  This  is  a  tech 
nique  which  seems  lo  have  beer 
broughl  over  from  Africa  and  which' 
has  the  effect  of  removing  the  fusej 
oil,  or  high  alcohols,  with  a  resulting 
increase  in  mellowness  and  dcereasd 
in  hangovers.  |.u  k  Daniel's  caughtj 
on,  a  number  of  years  ago.  partly  as^ 
a  icsiili  of  word-of-mouth  advert^ 
ing  from  prominent  consumers  (in 
eluding  William  Faulkner  and  ihe 
I. ue  Senator  Kenneth  McKellar)  and 
parti)  ol  an  energetic  promotion 
campaign:  bul  under  Reagor  Mot 
low's  direction  it  promises  to  main 
tain  its  present  standard. 

Reagor  Motlow,  like  most  dis 
tillers,  is  a  voluble  opponent  ol  the 
high    taxes— and    the    resulting    high 


83 


AFTE 


HOURS 


degree  of  supervision— that  the  gov- 
ernment imposes  on  him.  Since  a 
gallon  of  whiskey  which  he  can 
make  for  a  dollar  has  a  federal  tax 
on  it  of  $10.50,  even  before  the  state 
taxes  begin,  it  pays  the  Bureau  of 
Internal  Revenue  to  make  sure  that 
the  whole  whiskey  industry  doesn't 
spin  a  single  drop.  Its  office  in 
Louisville,  where  there  are  several 
big  companies,  is  said  to  take  in  an 
average  of  a  million  dollars  a  day; 
and  a  still  that  may  need  five  men 
to  operate  it  needs  seven  inspectors 
to  Avatch  it.  Where  the  federal  gov- 
ernment leaves  off  the  states  begin, 
each  with  its  special  regulations  and 
special  bits  of  appropriate  paper. 
Mr.  Motlow  observes  that  he  some- 
times thinks  he  is  not  in  the  whiskey 
business  but  in  the  stamp  business. 

The  distillers  argue,  with  some 
cogency,  that  the  effect  of  a  high 
tax  is  to  stimulate  moonshining, 
which  they  believe  amounts  to  at 
least  a  $50-million-dollar-a-year  busi- 
ness. Since  their  own  take  is  about 
$200  million,  this  means  that  we 
have  produced  an  illegal  industry  a 
quarter  the  size  of  its  legal  counter- 
part. And  there  are  those  who  even 
speak  well  of  the  illegal  product;  a 
man  at  one  distillery  assured  me 
that  the  smoothest  whiskey  he  had 
ever  tasted  was  Cajun  moonshine 
from  Louisiana.  The  problem  is  a 
complicated  one  since  the  taxes 
have  become  in  effect  a  social  and 
moral  device,  used  for  their  control 
over  behavior  as  much  as  their  pro- 
duction of  income. 

Where  my  own  reformist  zeal  is 
aroused  is  in  the  matter  of  "wet" 
and  "dry"  counties.  One  of  the 
many  ironies  of  whiskey-making  is 
that  so  much  of  it  takes  place,  quite 
legally,  in  localities  where  the  sale 
and  consumption  of  booze  is  theo- 
retically illegal.  You  may  repeat 
"theoretically."  The  effect  of  this 
is  inevitably  to  force  an  alliance  be- 
tween the  bootleggers  and  the  forces 
of  teetotalism,  who  have  common 
ground  only  in  hypocrisy  and  whose 
harm  to  their  society  is  consequently 
deep.  The  people  of  the  South  have 
long  been  famous  for  voting  Dry 
and  drinking  Wet,  but  since  they 
have  made  a  gift  to  the  rest  of  us  of 
our  greatest  beverage  it  seems  a  pity 
that  they  still  cannot  enjoy  it  openly, 
in  moderation  and  quiet. 

—Mr.   Harper 


She  knows 
only 

hardship 
and  hunger 


This  is  Do  Thi  Lan,  Vietnamese,  age  6.  A 
timid,  gentle  child,  she  knows  only  hard- 
ship and  want.  Her  parents  fled  the 
bloody  war  in  the  north  in  search  for 
freedom,  joining  the  hordes  of  refugees 
on  the  painful  trek  southivard.  Arriving 
in  Saigon,  the  father  soon  lost  his  life 
from  TB,  leaving  his  wife,  little  Lan  and 
an  infant  now  aged  2.  The  young  mother, 
old  before  her  years,  earns  40?  a  day, 
hardly  enough  to  keep  them  alive.  They 
share  a  one-room  lodging  in  poverty  un- 
known in  the  tvestern  world.  Blinded  by 
tears  of  despair,  heartsick  with  loss  of 
hope,  the  mother  watches  her  children  go 
to  bed  at  night  with  hunger  and  distress. 
Won't  you  help  little  Lan  or  a  child  like 
her?  Your  help  will  also  mean  help  to  the 
entire  little  family  ,  .  .  your  help  today 
means    their   hope   for   tomorrow. 


You  alone,  or  as  a  member  of  a  group,  can  help  these  children  by  becoming  a  Foster 
Parent.  You  will  be  sent  the  case  history  and  photographs  of  "your  child"  upon  receipt 
of  application  with  initial  payment.  "Your  child"  is  told  that  you  are  his  or  her  Foster 
Parent.  At  once  the  child  is  touched  by  love  and  a  sense  of  belonging.  All  correspondence 
is  through  our  office,  and  is  translated  and  encouraged.  We  do  no  mass  relief.  Each 
child,  treated  as  an  individual,  receives  a  monthly  cash  grant  of  nine  dollars  plus  food, 
clothing,  shelter,  education  and  medical  care  according  to  his  or  her  needs. 

Plan  is  a  non-political,  non-profit,  non-sectarian,  government-approved,  independent 
relief  organization,  helping  children,  wherever  the  need — in  France,  Belgium,  Italy, 
Greece,  Western  Germany,  Korea  and  Viet  Nam — and  is  registered  under  No.  VFA019 
with  the  Advisory  Committee  on  Voluntary  Foreign  Aid  of  the  United  States  Government 
and  is  filed  with  the  National  Information  Bureau  in  New  York  City.  Your  help  is 
vital  to  a  child  struggling  for  life.   Won't  you  let  some  child  love  you? 

©1958FPP,   Inc. 

Tatter  Patents'  p£a*,  u. 

352  FOURTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK   10,  N.  Y. 


PARTIAL  LIST  OF 
SPONSORS  AND 
FOSTER   PARENTS 

Mary   Pickford 

Mr.   and  Mrs. 

Robert  W.   Sarnoff 

Dr.   John    Haynes    Holmes 

Jean   Tennyson 

Helen   Hayes 

Dr.   Howard   A.   Rusk 

Edward   R.   Murrow 

Bing   Crosby 

K.   C.   GifFord 

Gov.  &  Mrs.  Walter  Kohler 

Charles   R.   Hook 

Mr.  and  Mrs. 

John    Cameron    Swayze 

Garry  Moore 


FOSTER  PARENTS'  PLAN,   INC.  H-l-58 

352   Fourth  Avenue,  New  York   10,   N.  Y. 

In   Canada:   P.  O.   Box  65,   Sta.  B,  Montreal,  Que. 

A.  I    wish   to   become   a    Foster   Parent  of   a    needy   child   for   one 

year.    If   possible,   sex ,  age    ,   nationality 

I   will  pay  $15  a  month  for  one  year  ($180).  Payment  will  be 

monthly  (  ),  quarterly  (  ),  semi-annually  (  ),  yearly  (  ). 
I    enclose   herewith    my    first   payment   $ 

B.  I    cannot   "adopt"    a    child,   but    I    would    like   to   help   a    child 

by     contributing     $ 

Name     

Address    

City Zone State 

Date Contributions    are    deductible    from    Income    Tax 


the  new 


BOOKS 


America's  Secular  Religion 


PAUL  PICKREL 


WHEN  a  female  character  in  one  of 
Ivy  Compton-Burnett's  novels  remarks 
a v i 1 1 1  1  el ici  that  Christmas  conies  bin  once  a  year, 
she  strongly  suggests  that  she  lias  exhausted 
everything  there  is  to  be  said  in  defense  <>l  the 
subject,  and  at  this  time  ol  year  her  appraisal 
will  probabl)  strike  many  a  tired  and  impover- 
ished holiday  veteran  as  remarkably  just.  But  for 
a  book  reviewer  Christmas  has  ai  least  one  other 

wel< onie  attribute  besides  its  deceni  infrequency: 
naineb  thai  during  the  holiday  season  publishers 
are  much  too  busy  selling  the  books  they  have 
already  published  to  bring  out  many  new  ones. 
This  temporary  lull  in  the  flood  of  new  pub- 
lications gives  me  an  opportunity  to  go  ba<  k  and 
survey  some  recent  but  not  necessarily  brand-new 
books  th.it  I  have  previously  neglected.  I  intend 
to  center  my  remarks  on  books  in  a  held  of 
perennial  genera]  interest  and— in  the  weeks  since 
the  Russians  launched  the  fust  man-made  satel- 
lite—of acute  and  specific  interest,  the  field  of 
American  education. 

FALSE     EXPECTATIONS 

PROBABLY  few  of  the  millions  who  saw 
and  heard  President  Eisenhower  on  the  occasion 
of  his  first  formal  address  to  the  nation  after  the 
launching  of  the  sputniks  were  surprised  that 
the  first  subject  he  took  up— after  reassuring  his 
audience  on  the  state  of  American  armaments- 
was  the  subject  of  education.  Nor  was  it  sur- 
prising that  the  most  important  innovation  he 
announced  to  meet  the  challenge  posed  by  Rus- 
sia's dramatically  demonstrated  technological 
plow  ess  was  his  appointment  of  a  leading  edu- 
cator. President  Killian  of  M.I.T.,  to  co-ordinate 
our  scientific  and  technological  research  and  to 
kee.p  him  in  touch  with  developments. 

It  would  have  been  surprising  if  the  President 
had  not  referred  to  education  and  educational 
leaders  in  his  speech  on  that  evening  in  mid- 
November  when  so  much  was  expected  of  him— 
surprising  not  only  because  of  the  direct  rele- 
vance of  education  to  the  research  and  develop- 


ment that  lie  behind  modern  armaments,  but 
also  because  education  is  America's  secular  re- 
ligion, and  to  fail  to  invoke  it  at  a  time  of 
national  disticss  would  show  a  lack  ol  decorum. 

With  oiu  separation  of  church  and  state,  edu- 
cational institutions  (for  the  most  part  uncon- 
sciously) have  come  to  perform,  or  lo  try  to  per- 
form, many  of  the  functions  that  religious  insti- 
tutions pel  form  in  other  societies.  Long  ago  a 
Latin  visitor  observed  thai  the  only  thing  he 
had  seen  before  thai  was  at  all  comparable  to 
a  high-school  graduation  in  a  small  American 
town  was  a  first  Communion  in  an  Italian  \il- 
lage.  Around  the  schools  have  grown  up  the 
elaborate  but  educationally  incidental  para- 
phernalia ol  homecomings,  parades,  and  big 
games— an  attempt  to  fill  the  need  lor  sym- 
bolism, lor  magnificence  and  tradition,  in  a 
societx  with  lew  official  occasions  for  either 
carnival  or  ceremony.  The  process  of  initiation, 
the  rites  by  which  boys  ire  inducted  into  man's 
estate,  are  in  most  primitive  societies  in  the 
hands  of  priests  and  elders,  hut  with  us  they  are 
left  to  the  not  always  lender  mercies  of  high- 
school  gangs  and  college  fraternities  whose  mem- 
bers are  only  slightly  older  than  the  initiates 
themselves.  Our  schools  have  many  characteris- 
es that  elsewhere  might  be  thought  more  ap- 
propriate in  religious  institutions— a  conviction 
that  they  must  be  all  things  to  all  men,  for  in- 
stance, and  a  reluctance  to  excommunicate. 

So  whenever  anything  arises  to  put  America's 
destiny  in  question,  the  schools  come  under  close 
scrutiny:  they  are  both  blamed  for  having  failed 
to  forestall  the  clanger  before  it  had  happened 
and  counted  on  to  correct  it  after  it  has.  For  a 
long  time,  whenever  anything  went  wrong  the 
cry  was  for  more  education;  now  that  more  and 
more  young  people  have  spent  more  and  more 
years  in  school  and  college,  the  cry  is  for  better 
education. 

The  trouble  with  regarding  education  as  a 
secular  religion  is  not  so  much  that  it  leads  us 
to  expect  too  much  of  our  schools  as  that  it  leads 
us  to  expect  the  wrong  things.  A  pluralistic 
society  like  ours,  in  which  values  are  established 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 


85 


not  by  any  central  agency  but  by  all  kinds  of 
persons  and  groups  throughout  society,  has  many 
advantages;  but  its  schools  cannot  be  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  population  that  provides  their 
students,  teachers,  administrators,  school  boards, 
and  financial  support.  A  genuine  religion  can 
be  different;  it  has  or  claims  to  have  a  super- 
natural, other-worldly  sanction;  that  sanction 
gives  it  power  to  go  against  the  tide  and  gives  it 
a  standard  against  which  it  can  measure  itself 
and  purge  itself  of  excesses.  But  a  secular  re- 
ligion is,  after  all,  secular— of  this  world;  its  goals 
are  not  built-  in  or  self-correcting.  A  public 
school  has  little  power,  for  instance,  to  inculcate 
a  greater  respect  for  learning  and  intelligence 
than  the  community  as  a  whole  really  feels.  An 
occasional  teacher  can  do  it  by  sheer  force  of 
personality,  an  occasional  student  will  encounter 
a  book  or  problem  that  convinces  him  that  the 
life  of  the  mind  is  deeply  absorbing  no  matter 
what  other  people  may  think,  but  in  general  we 
are  simply  deluding  ourselves  if  we  expect  our 
schools  to  maintain  standards  that  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  has  abandoned  or  never  held. 

Since  the  sputniks  first  appeared  the  standards 
the  American  people  hold  have  undergone  rapid 
change.  As  that  astute  British  observer  of  the 
American  scene,  D.  W.  Brogan,  has  recently 
pointed  out,  the  more  complacent  excuses  for 
American  shortcomings  have  been  destroyed— 
the  notion  that  the  Russians  couldn't  make  much 
technological  progress  without  a  conspiracy  of 
spies  who  stole  our  secrets,  for  instance;  or  the 
notion  that  we  were  too  rich  to  have  to  make 
choices;  above  all,  the  notion  that  whatever  our 
faults  we  were  still  out  ahead. 

Probably  never  before  have  the  American  peo- 
ple been  so  ready  to  take  education  seriously  as 
in  the  last  two  months.  Our  schools  have  a  tre- 
mendous opportunity,  but  it  can  be  frittered 
away  all  too  easily,  by  attempting  too  much  or 
too  little  or  the  wrong  things.  The  word  educa- 
tion in  itself  contains  no  magic  to  exorcise  the 
demons  that  plague  us;  it  is  simply  the  collective 
label  for  a  great  variety  of  human  activities  of 
widely  varying  worth  and  relevance.  To  seek  out 
what  is  most  worthy  and  most  relevant  is  cer- 
tainly a  big  assignment,  but  it  is  an  assignment 
that  faces  the  American  people. 

STILL     PERTINENT 

NO W  books  have  one  characteristic  that 
distinguishes  them  from  most  other  con- 
temporary means  of  communication:  there  is 
still  a  considerable  delay  between  the  time  they 
are  written  and  the  time  they  are  read.  The 
radio  or  television  commentator  can  make  his 
voice  crackle  with  the  urgency  of  today's  crisis 
and  trust  that  all  will  be  forgotten  by  tomorrow; 
the  journalist's  prose  and  prophecies  leap  to 
print   but  vanish  with   the  garbage.    But   what 


the  writer  of  a  book  says  will  be  read  in  a  dif- 
ferent context  of  events  and  can  be  held  against 
him.  If  he  remembers  that  fact,  it  is  a  lesson  in 
humility;  if  he  forgets  it,  it  may  be  a  lesson  in 
humiliation.  All  the  books  about  to  be  discussed 
were  written  well  before  the  earth  satellites  were 
launched;  as  a  group  they  stand  up  well  and 
testify  to  the  fact  that  some  at  least,  of  our  educa- 
tional leaders  were  not  caught  asleep. 

Brainpower  Quest  edited  by  Andrew  A.  Free- 
man (Macmillan,  $5),  though  recently  published, 
is  the  record  of  a  symposium  held  at  Cooper 
Union  more  than  a  year  ago  on  the  subject  of 
the  nation's  supply  of  engineering  talent,  and  it 
shows  that  alert  and  resourceful  men  were  at 
that  time  very  much  alive  to  the  problem.  The 
book  has  the  characteristics  of  most  symposia: 
the  various  speakers  use  more  or  less  the  same 
statistics,  some  contributors  arrived  riding  on 
their  favorite  hobbyhorses  and  refused  to  dis- 
mount, some  interesting  points  get  insufficient 
discussion  and  some  generalities  get  too  much. 
On  the  whole  the  speakers  say  about  what  they 
might  be  expected  to  say  on  such  subjects  as 
recruitment  of  students,  the  need  for  better 
preparation  of  students,  the  desirability  of  edu- 
cating engineers  more  broadly,  etc. 

But  certain  points  are  less  expected.  One  is 
the  question  whether  we  really  need  more  engi- 
neers or  simply  need  to  make  much  better  use  of 
those  we  already  have.  Opinion  on  this  point  is 
divided,  but  there  are  enough  speakers  who  hold 
that  the  supply  is  adequate  if  wisely  used  to 
make  one  wonder  if  there  may  not  be  some- 
thing to  their  argument.  At  a  time  when  almost 
every  field  is  clamoring  for  more  and  better  peo- 
ple to  come  into  it,  and  none  more  than  the 
sciences,  engineering,  and  teaching,  no  one  can 
help  wondering  if  there  are  enough  "better"  peo- 
ple to  supply  all  the  demands.  At  this  point  the 
history  of  the  medical  profession  may  be  instruc- 
tive: there  are  fewer  medical  schools  in  America 
now  than  fifty  years  ago,  and  the  number  of  their 
graduates  has  not  greatly  increased,  yet  on  the 
whole  medical  care  has  improved  immensely. 
The  reason  seems  to  be  that  the  individual  physi- 
cian's time  has  been  stretched  by  centering 
medicine  in  institutions  like  hospitals  and 
clinics  and  by  the  creation  of  a  whole  group  of 
new  professions  and  occupations— laboratory 
technicians,  anaesthetists,  roentgenologists,  and 
so  on— that  relieve  the  M.D.  of  all  but  his  strictly 
professional  duties.  There  may  be  a  lesson  in 
what  has  happened  to  medicine  for  both  engi- 
neering and  teaching.  The  loss  in  personal  rela- 
tionship that  went  with  the  old  family  doctor 
would  be  even  more  marked  if  teaching  were 
professionalized  in  the  way  medicine  has  been, 
but  presumably  nobody  has  an  old  family 
engineer. 

Another  unexpected  point  that  comes  out 
here  is  the  report  of  the  very  high  proportion 


86 


The  man  who 
reads  dictionaries 


THE     N  E  W     l'.OOKS 


<QW.  Suschitzky  Photo 

SEAN  O'CASEY,  one  of  the  great 
writers  of  our  century,  says: 

"T  must  have  spent  years  of  life  with 
JL  dictionaries,  for  a  dictionary  was 
the  first  tool  I  used  to  learn  to  read.  I 
have  five  of  them  now.  Webster's  New 
World  Dictionary,  College  Edition,  is 
a  great  dictionary  and  a  lovely  hook,  a 
classic  among  dictionaries.  It  is  a  fas- 
cinating one,  easy  to  handle,  beauti- 
fully printed,  and  splendidly  bound. 
This  splendid  work  shows  that  the 
American  way  of  words  is  a  good  way, 
and  I,  on  behalf  of  Whitman,  cry  hail 
to  it." 

The   name   Webster  alone  on   a  dictionary 
is   not   enough    to   guarantee   excellence 
of    this    kind.    Visit    your    bookseller 
and  ask  to  see  — 


WEBSTER'S 


NEW  WORLD 


DICTIONARY 


WEBSTER'S 
NEWWORLDk 


<y/s<y»iyf  / 


C<>LLEGE  ED 


ITIOH 


142,000 
entries 

1,760  pages 

In  various 

bindings, 

from  $5.75 


THE  WORLD  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


ol  students  who  I.nl  in  engineering 
schools:  50  pet  cent.  1  hue  may  lie 
a  little  padding  in  this  figure;  obvi- 
ously il  the  president  of  one  engi- 
neering school  says  that  his  school 
fails  50  pei  i  cm  ol  iis  students  the 
presidents  of  other  engineering 
schools  will  not  rush  in  to  s.in  thai 
theii  institutions  are  less- severe,  lint 
if  something  like  that  proportion  ol 
Students  is  being  tailed  it  means  a 
tremendous  waste  of  educational  fa- 
cilities; something  is  wrong  either 
with    I  he   l\  a]    Students  air   admitted 

oi   the  way  they  are  taught  aftei  ad 
mission   or  both.      I  he  situation   is 

made  worse  by  the  fact  (il  it  is  a  hut 
—the  spcakeis  seem  not  to  he  very 
sure)  that  most  of  the  failures  do  not 
ordinarily  make  use  ol  theii  partial 
engineering  training  bin  go  into 
othei  occupations.  The)  would  look 
like  a  reservoir  ol  talent  foi  engi- 
neering sub-professions,  though  one 
shrewd  speakei  with  experience  re- 
in, it  ks,  in  effe(  I,  thai  the  man  who 
has  failed  is  net  usuall)  the  besi  oi 
most  willing  aide  to  the  man  who 
has   sin  (  ceded. 

The  most  arresting  and  disquiet- 
ing remark  in  Brainpower  Quest  is 
a  remindei  that,  since  Russia  offers 
us  young  people  fewer  choices  of 
<  ai  eei  than  we  do,  the  fields  that  aie 
open  to  them,  like  s(  ience  and  cngi- 
neering,  will  he  more  crowded,  con- 
sequently will  be  more  competitive, 
and  quite  possibly  will  have  highei 
standards  ol  accomplishment.  Rus 
sian  boys  and  girls  in  search  ol 
prestige  and  othei  lew  aids  cannot 
go  into  stockbroking  or  advertising 
oi  consumer  research  or  many  other 
fields  that  oiler  prizes  to  the  ambi- 
tious young  American,  because  those 
fields  do  not  exist  in  Russia;  they 
( mi  go  into  sc  ien<  e. 

We  can  respond  to  that  fact  in 
several  different  ways.  We  can  enact 
a  frantic  "crash"  program  of  scien- 
tific and  technological  education, 
which  may  be  of  some  use  in  the 
shoit  run  but  unless  it  is  very  care- 
fully considered  will  distort  our 
schools  and  other  institutions  in  the 
long  run.  Or  we  can  go  the  whole 
hog  and  put  our  society  through  a 
thorough  Russification,  thereby  ful- 
filling the  prophecies  of  those  who 
have  said  that  the  power  stalemate 
would  end  by  America  and  Russia 
becoming  just  alike.  Or  we  can  re- 
examine our  society  with  a  view  to 


bringing  it  in  line  not  with  the  bes 
in    Russia   but    with   the  best    in  ouii 
selves.    \n\  society  is  a  living  dclun 
lion   ol    c  llu  icni  \,  ol   what   it   think 
worth    saving    and    what    it    doesn' 
mind  wasting.    Wc  could  make  con 
siderable  changes  in  our  definitioi 
ol   elli-.  ien< \    without  any   danger  a 
being     Russified.      The     confidenti 
that    our    institutions   automatically 
insured   superiority,    that    America! 
science  bad  to  be  better  than   Rus 
sian      sc  icni  e      bee  ausc      il      was      ill 
sc  icni  e    ol    a    tree    people,    has    no\ 
been    disc  i  edited,    but    that    does   m 
necessarily  discredit  our  institution 
ii  m.  ans  that  they  cannoi  be  lefi  i 
themselves  to  perform  tasks  oi  estal 
li-.fi  values  that  are  the  business  c 
all  of  us. 

One  point  thai  is  hardly  tout  he 
upon  in  Brainpower  (hirst  and  ih; 
may  have  been  pi opei  lv  regarded  ; 
lying  outside  the  area  of  discussioi 
though  it  is  certainly  crucial  in  th 
whole  mallei  ol  sc  ientific  and  led 
nological  education  and  indeed  c 
all  education,  is  the  question  ol  ii 
novation  and  c  real  i\  it  v— where  at 
how  and  from  what  kind  of  peopl 
new  ideas  arise,  what  kind  of  ecluc 
tional  s\stem  is  mosi  conducive  t 
inventiveness  and  discovery.  Sord 
informed  observers  believe  that  Ru 
si. i  and  America  are  both  still  li\in 
oil  Western  Europe's  capital  of  put 
science,  thai  neither  has  created  tl 
conditions  favorable  to  fundament 
innovation,  and  that  in  the  long  ru 
the  Inst  nation  to  do  so  will  be  tl 
one  that  is  out  ahead.  It  seems  :: 
likely  that  "crash"  programs  will  d 
that  job,  and  it  seems  unlikely  lb; 
it  can  be  done  lor  science  in  iso 
tion  from  the  rest  of  the  intellects 
life  of  the  nation. 

A     RADICAL     REFORME 

THOUGH  Irving  Adlei 
What  We  Want  of  Oi;i 
Schools  (John  Day,  $3.75)  was  pul, 
Iished  a  month  before  the  fir 
sputnik  was  launched,  the  launchii 
makes  it  more  rather  than  less  d 
gent,  because  Adler  speaks  to  ti 
times.  Most  of  the  recent  popul; 
critics  of  American  public  educatin 
have  been  conservatives  trying  ll 
guide  education  back  to  the  pat 
they  knew  when  they  were  youia 
most  of  them  have  been  trained  i 
the  liberal  arts,  with  at  most  a  lir 


87 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 

ited  interest  in  innovation  in  general 
and  in  technological  innovation  in 
particular;  and  often  their  firsthand 
experience  of  public  schools  has 
been  slight.  Adler,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  radical,  a  man  who  wants 
to  make  changes  that  are  not  a  re- 
turn to  old  ways;  his  education  is  in 
science  and  mathematics,  he  is 
deeply  interested  in  technology,  and 
he  has  experience  as  a  teacher  of 
mathematics  in  public  schools. 

On  many  points  Adler  seems  to 
me  very  interesting  and  quite  wrong. 
His  conception  of  man  as  only  a 
technological  animal  is  too  narrow: 
"man's  characteristically  human  ac- 
tivity is  directed  toward  control  of 
his  environment."  Man  is  engaged 
in  just  as  "human"  an  activity  when 
he  is  controlling  himself  as  when  he 
is  controlling  his  environment,  pos- 
sibly more  so. 

In  describing  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic pressures  on  public  education, 
Adler  undertakes  a  useful  kind  of 
analysis,  but  it  is  much  too  crude 
to  do  justice  to  the  facts.  He  sees 
the  schools  as  squeezed  between  two 
groups:  first,  a  small  privileged  class 
who  want  to  keep  school  budgets 
low  (to  save  taxes)  and  the  quality 
of  teaching  poor  (to  assure  a  labor 
force  that  knows  just  enough  to  do 
its  work  but  not  enough  to  make 
any  trouble),  and  second,  "the  com- 
mon people"  who  want  good  schools 
for  their  children.  Actually,  in  be- 
tween these  two  groups  stand  most 
of  the  American  people,  who  are  and 
think  of  themselves  as  middle  class; 
they  run  the  schools  because  they 
supply  most  of  the  teachers  and  ad- 
ministrators, most  of  the  members 
of  PTA's  and  school  boards,  and 
most  of  the  funds.  They  are  not  as 
rich  as  the  members  of  the  NAM, 
but  they  have  a  great  many  more 
votes.  Those  in  the  middle  class  are 
by  no  means  united  on  what  they 
want  of  the  schools,  except,  to  do 
them  justice,  most  of  them  want  the 
schools  to  be  "good." 

Adler's  argument  for  academic 
freedom  is  also  open  to  exception. 
He  says  that  he  believes  that  all 
points  of  view  should  be  represented, 
though  his  chapter  on  the  Negro 
and  education  suggests  that  he 
would  not  care  to  have  his  children 
taught  by  a  white  supremacist,  and 
his  (very  good)  discussion  of  teach- 
ing methods  suggests  that  he  would 


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by  GERALD  CARSON 

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Birth  of  a 
Grandfather 

by  MAY  SARTON 

"May  Sarton's  best  novel."  —  The 
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by  BURKE  DAVIS 

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Neither  Black 
Nor  White 

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88 


Who  are  these 

UNITARIANS? 


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company  with  Emerson,  Jefferson, 
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metz,  Darwin,  Morse, 
Bret  Harte,  Walt  Whit- 
man, Mark  Twain,  Low- 
ell, and  other  great 
thinkers,  past  and 
present. 


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THE     NEW     BOOKS 


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not  care  to  have  them  taught  algebra 
by  anyone  who  believes  in  the  the- 
ory of  "incidental  learning"  (the 
theory  that  a  subjeel  <  .m  be  picked 
up  incidentally  while  the  student  is 
engaged  in  other  projects  or  activi- 
ties). 

But,  however  that  may  be,  the  Eaci 
is  that  all  points  <>l  view  cannot  be 
represented,  and  il  academic  free- 
dom depended  on  such  representa- 
tion (.is  ii  does  not >,  then  at ademic 
Ereedom  would  be  impossible. 
Think,  for  example,  ol  the  sunk 
ol  Shakespeare  in  college.  Think  of 
hon  man)  different  ionises  you 
would  need  to  have  to  represent  all 
points  of  view  on  the  authorship 
alone— you  would  have  to  have  a 
Baconian,  an  Oxfordian,  a  Marlov- 
ian,  a  Dyerite,  and  so  on  and  so  on; 
you  would  even  need  a  Shake- 
spearean. Then  think  of  all  the 
other  (ouiscs  you  would  n<c<\  to 
represent  all  points  ol  view  on  the 
chronology,  the  text,  and  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  plays.  Ii  is  impos- 
sible. No  philosoph)  department  in 
America  is  large  enough  to  include 
a  spokesman  lor  every  philosophy; 
no  economics  department  is  huge 
enough  to  include  a  spokesman  for 
every  economic  theory;  and  none 
needs  to  be.  What  Adler  means  is 
that  he  thinks  Communists  should 
be  permitted  to  teach.  There  is  a 
fairly  good  argumenl  on  his  side,  but 
it  does  not  depend  on  the  principle 
that  all  points  of  view  should  be 
represented. 

Vet  il  there  were  nothing  else  of 
value  in  Adler's  book  (and  there  is 
a  good  deal),  it  would  be  worth  read- 
ing for  one  chapter  alone,  a  chapter 
called  "The  I.  O.  Hoax."  This  is  a 
discussion  which,  if  taken  seriously, 
could  make  an  important  change  in 
our  estimate  of  the  resources  of 
human  intelligence  available  to  us. 
For  Adler  persuasively  argues  that 
the  I.Q.  has  come  to  be  regarded  as 
a  measure  of  innate  ability,  as  a  fixed 
limit  on  what  can  be  expected  of 
the  child,  and  is  used  by  the  schools 
to  excuse  their  own  failures.  He  be- 
lieves that  schools  should  entirely 
stop  using  I.  O.  tests  and  use  only 
achievement  tests,  and  that  they 
should  stop  having  "second  track" 
curriculums  to  which  students  with 
low  I.  Q.'s  are  permanently  con- 
demned and  instead  set  up  "feeder 
courses"    in   which    those   with   low 


si  ores  on  at  hievemenl  tests  would  be 
specially  trained  until  the)  were 
read)  to  entei  the  "fust  track."  Adler 
is  mi  intent  on  maintaining  that  all 
God's  chillun  must  have  shoes  that 
a  c.ihIc'ss  leading  might  give  the 
impression  that  he-  thinks  the)  all 
have  feet  ol  the  same  size,  but  in 
I. it  t  Adler  does  not  deny  that  there 
are  differences  in  human  intelli- 
gence;  he  onh  argues  that  since  we 
have  found  no  reliable  wa\  of 
measuring  those  differences  we  have 
no  business  setting  up  an  educa- 
tional s\stem  based  on  them. 

A     NECESSARY     BRIDGE 

PAUL       WOODRING'S      A 

Fourth  of  a  Nation  (McGraw-Hill, 
$4.50)  is  an  entertaining  and  in- 
formative attempt  to  close  the  most 
disgraceful  schism  dividing  the  aca- 
demic community  today:  the  schism 
between  those  who  are  concerned 
with  the  content  ol  education  (the 
subjec  t-mattei  ists)  and  those  who  are 
concerned  with  the  method  of  edu- 
cation (the  edu<  ationists). 

Except  lor  an  occasional  flare-up 
ovei  something  like  the  leaching  of 
reading,  there  seems  to  be  compara- 
tively little  public  criticism  of  the 
nursery  schools,  kindergartens,  and 
lower  grades,  all  of  which  are  domi- 
nated by  the  educationists  and  the 
theory  that  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  child  are  the 
matters  of  primary  concern.  Except 
lor  an  occasional  flare-up  over  some- 
thing like  the  loyalt)  ol  teachers, 
i  here  seems  to  be  comparatively  little 
public  criticism  of  the  colleges, 
which  are  dominated  (except  lor 
schools  of  education)  by  the  subject* 
matterists  and  the  theory  that  the 
growth  and  dissemination  of  the 
various  branches  of  knowledge  are 
the  matters  of  primary  concern.  The 
problematic  area  in  education  lies 
in  between,  in  the  secondary  schools, 
the  junior  and  senior  high  schools. 
Since,  according  to  one  of  the  con- 
tributors to  Brainpower  Quest,  boys 
and  girls  make  their  decisions  to  go 
into  science,  engineering,  and  other 
fields  in  the  secondary  schools,  and 
since  it  is  there  that  they  receive  or 
fail  to  receive  the  training  necessary 
for  them  to  go  on,  the  controversy 
over  what  group  or  theory  should 
dominate  those  schools  is  no  trivial 
matter. 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 


The  educationists  have  wanted  to 
reach  up  and  control  secondary  edu- 
cation, and  have  pretty  well  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  it:  the  subject-mat- 
terists,  alarmed  at  what  the  educa- 
tionists have  made  of  the  secondary 
schools,  now  want  to  reach  down 
and  control  them.  Since  neither 
group  knows  or  understands  or 
trusts  the  other,  they  are  tragically 
failing  to  build  the  bridge  that 
would  enable  the  individual  to  pass 
from  childhood  to  adolescence,  to 
move  from  an  education  centered  on 
himself  to  an  education  centered  on 
the  world  outside,  smoothly  and  suc- 
cessively. 

There  will  be  varying  estimates  of 
Woodring's  attempt  to  provide  the 
blueprints  for  such  a  bridge  in  A 
Fourth  of  a  Nation  (the  title,  by  the 
way,  simply  refers  to  the  proportion 
of  the  American  population  now  in 
school):  the  most  valuable  part  of 
the  book  is  the  very,  skillful  job  of 
putting  the  whole  controversy  in  its 
historical  setting.  It  is  a  sad  fact 
that  though  several  of  the  most  in- 
fluential critics  of  public  education 
have  been  trained  as  historians,  they 
have  seldom  tried  to  look  at  what 
has  happened  to  American  educa- 
tion historically.  Woodring,  a  pro- 
fessor of  psychology  in  a  teachers' 
college  at  the  time  this  book  was 
written,  does. 

A  Fourth  of  a  Nation  is  written 
concisely,  with  wit  and  imagination 
(qualities  lacking  in  Adler's  book), 
and  the  first  sections  are  particularly 
recommended  to  anyone  interested 
in  the  controversy  now  raging. 

MORE     BRIEFLY     MENTIONED 

I N  American  Education  in  the 
Twentieth  Century  (Harvard,  $5) 
I.  L.  Kandel  shows  little  of  the 
sprightliness  of  Woodring;  in  fact  he 
has  written  a  rather  dull  and  very 
good  book.  The  dullness  arises 
largely  from  the  fact  thai  the  book 
belongs  to  a  series  devoted  to  the 
description  of  various  aspects  of 
American  life  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, and  Kandel  has  taken  the  job 
of  description  very  seriously.  Al- 
though he  has  by  no  means  refrained 
from  criticism,  he  advances  his  criti- 
cisms so  unobtrusively  that  their 
shrewdness  and  severity  are  often 
disguised.  In  telling  his  story  Kandel 
quotes  generously  from  official  docu- 


ments    and    organizational    report 
that  are  not  very  entertaining  read- 
ing but  necessary  to  an  understand- 
ing of  what  has  happened. 

Adler's  and  Woodring's  books  are 
lively  and  disputatious  enough  to 
hold  the  casual  reader's  interest;  to 
read  Kandel  you  have  to  be  inter- 
ested in  the  subject.  But  if  you  are 
interested,  you  can  learn  a  great 
deal  from  him  about  the  road  we 
have  taken  in  public  education. 
Kandel  is  a  professor  emeritus  at 
Teachers'  College,  Columbia,  and 
his  story  centers  on  the  develop- 
ments that  have  taken  place  there, 
but  he  is  not  a  propagandist. 

The  Second  Report  to  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  President's  Committee 
on  Education  Beyond  the  High 
School  (Government  Printing  Office) 
has  been  out  six  months  but  remains 
eminently  worth  reading.  It  con- 
tains a  wealth  of  good  sense  on  the 
subjects  discussed  and  is  clearly  if 
repetitiously  presented.  Perhaps  the 
most  curious  piece  of  information 
that  emerges  from  the  report  is  that 
we  seem  to  have  less  command  of 
the  facts  about  what  is  going  on  in 
college  education  than  about  almost 
any  other  activity  of  comparable 
scope  in  the  country.  Another 
curiosity  is  how  little  of  American 
higher  education  is  financed  by  stu- 
dents' borrowing  (about  1.5  per 
cent).  It  is  odd  that  we  will  buy 
anything  on  time  except  learning. 
Presumably  the  arguments  against 
borrowing  are  early  marriage  and 
the   uncertainty  of  military  service. 

For  Future  Doctors  (Chicago, 
$3.50)  is  a  collection  of  talks  and  in- 
formal essays  by  the  late  Alan  Gregg, 
for  many  years  director  of  the  medi- 
cal sciences  division  and  later  vice- 
president  of  the  Rockefeller  Founda- 
tion. All  the  essays  deal  in  one  Avay 
or  another  with  medical  education, 
especially  outside  the  classroom: 
they  show  a  consistent  interest  in  (he 
inner  growth  of  the  physician,  and 
much  of  the  material  is  autobio- 
graphical. Dr.  Gregg  points  out  a 
lack  of  "case  studies"  of  medical  edu- 
cation—studies of  how  and  why  a 
physician  suddenly  grows  or  'urns 
a  corner  in  his  internal  development 
—and  this  posthumous  collection 
docs  something  to  remedy  (hat 
lack.  (Incidentally,  the  "case  study" 
method  lias  recently  been  looked 
upon    with     increasing    interest    by 


Going  Into 
Politics 


A  Guide  for  Citizens 

By  ROBERT  E.  MERRIAM 
and  RACHEL  M.GOETZ 

A  beginner's  guide  to  polit- 
ical action  in  which  the  au- 
thors —  Robert  Merriam  a 
professional  and  Rachel 
Goetz  an  amateur  politician 
—  show  the  citizen  what 
politics  is  like  on  the  inside  : 
from  penetrating  and  mov- 
ing around  inside  a  political 
party  to  getting  elected  (or 
defeated).  This  book  pro- 
vides realistic,  step-by-step 
information  on  participa- 
tion in  political  affairs  for 
every  civic-minded  man  and 
woman. 

At  your  bookstore  •  $2.50 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS; 


The  Community 
Theatre 

And  How  it  Works 
By  JOHN  WRAY  YOUNG 

A  long-needed,  long-awaited 
how-to  book  on  the  organi- 
zation and  operation  of  a 
community  theatre,  by  the 
Director  of  Shreveport's 
model  Little  Theatre.  "In-  i 
telligent  and  stimulating... 
a  must  for  anyone  planning 
to  work  in  that  field  and  for 
everyone  already  working 
in  it." — Howard  Lindsay 

"The  only  book  of  its 
kind,  and  unlikely  to  be  su- 
perseded for  a  long  time  as 
a  description  of  our  uncom- 
mercial theatre." —  John 
Gassner,  Yale  University 
School  of  Drama 

At  your  bookstore  •  $3.50 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


90 

educational  researchers,  and  an  ac- 
count of  what  may  be  the  raosl 
elaborate  attempt  ever  made  to  as- 
semble such  material  appears  in  this 
issue,  page  56:  "The  Case  of  the 
Furious  Children.") 

The  Tarnished  Tower  b)  Ann 
Marbut  (Mi  Kay,  $3.95)  is  an  unpre- 
tentious but  readable  novel  about 
politics  in  an  educational  institu- 
tion, "the  fastest-growing  state  uni- 
versity in  America."  Miss  Marbut 
has  broken  the  mold  of  the  conven- 
tional struggle  between  liberals  and 
conservatives  and  come  a  good  deal 
closer  to  the  truth  about  academic 
politics.  She  pits  the  opportunists. 
the  empire-builders  interested  onh 
in  quantity,  against  the  men  who 
believe  that  education  means  qual- 
ity. Unfortunately  she  is  not  able 
to  work  out  this  conflict  in  the  con- 
text of  institutional  life  and  has  to 
resolve  it  in  private  life,  as  if  it  were 
primarily  a  mattei  of  relations  be- 
tween  husbands  and  wives,  but  at 
least  she  has  sketched  the  problem. 

Herbert  Simmons  is  a  young 
Negro  novelist  who  has  written  a 
book  of  considerable  interest  about 
Negro  youth  in  a  big  city,  Corner 
Boy  (Houghton  Mifflin,  S3. 50).  The 
young  people  he  writes  about  are 
just  out  of  high  school,  at  an  age 
when,  according  to  the  writers  on 
education,  a  great  deal  of  talent  is 
lost,  especially  among  minority 
groups.  For  most  of  Simmons'  char- 
acters, the  choice  is  between  going  to 
college  and  going  into  rackets.  Col- 
lege is  for  them  a  slow  and  uncer- 
tain way  to  prestige;  the  rackets  are 
Easter  and  more  exciting.  Simmons' 
characterization  is  a  little  sketchy, 
but  he  writes  with  sympathy  and 
apparent  knowledge.  The  story 
moves  along  and  the  ending  has 
dramatic  force. 

Lura  Beam's  A  Maine  Village 
(Wilfred  Funk,  $3.50)  is  a  charming 
account  of  life  in  a  Maine  settle- 
ment of  fewer  than  300  people  at 
the  turn  of  (he  century.  This  is 
not  a  book  for  the  young,  but  any- 
one who  enjoys  the  painstaking, 
affectionate  reconstruction  of  the 
past,  without  condescension  or  senti- 
mentalizing, will  find  ii  a  jewel. 

For  present  purposes  the  most  rele- 
vant chapter  is  Miss  beam's  account 
of  the  one-room  school  she  attended 
sixty  years  ago.  Sonic  ol  the  school's 
practices  would   now   be   regarded  as 


BOOKS     IN     BRIEF 

advanced;     there    were    no    report 

cards,  and  Students  were  not  divided 
into  grades  but  grouped  according 
to  their  abilities  in  the  various  sub- 
jects—the good  readers  read  together 
and  the  good  figurers  had  arithmetic 
together  and  so  on.  The  secret  of 
the  teaching  Miss  Beam  lays  bare  in 
a  single  sentence:  "Square  root  was 
taught  with  intensity  and  was  ac- 
luallv  a  popular  topic."  She  thinks 
that  the  greatest  weakness  of  the  edu- 
cati  tal  system  lav  in  its  complete 
fail  e  to  relate  what  was  taught  to 
the  hildren's  lives:  they  studied  the 
Re    :)lutionary    War    but    were    not 


told  that  Revolutionary  troops  ha 
passed  over  their  very  land;  the 
learned  a  definition  of  peninsul 
from  the  geography  book  but  it  di 
not  occur  to  them  that  the  hunk  d 
land  stickini;  out  in  their  lake  wa 
a  peninsula.  Miss  Beam  thinks  tha 
the  chiel  virtue  of  the  very  Iimite 
curriculum  was  that  it  made  Iti 
products  self-assured;  they  felt  tha 
they  knew  what  they  needed  t 
know.  Probably  nobody  can  be  tha 
self-assured  now,  but  a  reduction  o 
the  curriculum  in  most  secondar 
schools  and  colleges  would  be  at 
improvement. 


BOOKS 


in  brief 


KATIIERINE  GAUSS  JACKSON 


FICTION 

Amelie  and  Pierre,  by  Henri  Troyat. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  when 
Corneille's  he  Cid  was  being  acted 
in  Paris,  the  hero  and  heroine  were 
so  beloved  by  the  public  that  there 
was  a  saying  (as  I  remember  it): 
"Toute  Paris  a  pour  Chimene  les 
yeux  de  Rodrigue."  Now  that  t  he- 
sale  of  the  first  three  Amelie  novels 
has  passed  250,000  copies  in  France 
perhaps  the  line  could  be  rewritten: 
"Toute  Paris  a  pour  Amelie  les  yeux 
de  Pierre."  In  any  case  this  reader 
certainly  has  for  Amelie  the  eyes  of 
Pierre  and  has  had  as  much  sus- 
tained pleasure  from  the  two  quiet 
books,  Amelie  in  Love  and  Amelie 
and  Pierre  as  in  any  novels  I've  read 
in  the  last  few  years.  They  are  part 
of  a  trilogy  called  The  Seed  and  the 
Fruit,  the  family  saga  of  two  young 
people  from  Chapelle-aux-Bois  in 
the  Auvergne,  who  grow  up,  fall  in 
love,  marry,  and  in  this  volume, 
suffer  with  the  rest  of  their  country- 
men the  horror  of  World  War  I. 
From  the  talk  in  the  little  cafe 
(which  Amelie  runs  in  Pierre's  ab- 
sence at  the  front)  in  an  unimpor- 
tant Paris  side  street,  one  feels  with 
extraordinary  vividness  the  anguish 
of  those  now  so  primitive  battles 
long  ago  and  the  human  love  and 
affe<  lion  that  carried  people  through 
them.  This  story  of  passionate  mar- 
ried   love    has    simplicity,    strength, 


distinction,  and  absorbing  narrativJ 
interest.         Simon  k  Schuster,  $4.54 

The  House  on  the  Beach,  by  ¥..  Lj 
Withers. 

A    mystery-horror    story    about    < 
twelve-year  old    orphan    girl    in    tin 
clutches  of  her  stepfather  and  aun 
who  are   trying   to  murder  her  fo: 
her  money.  Of  course  no  other  adul 
will    believe   her  stories  of  what   id 
happening    and    the    cat-and-mousd 
suspense  goes  on  for  two  long  day^ 
and    many    incredible    pages.     One 
does  want   to  know   what   happen! 
and  reads  to  the  end,  but  the  pub- 
lishers do  it  a  disservice  in  compar 
ing  it  to   The  Mad  Seed  which  had 
great  literary  quality  and  a  greater 
horror  even   than   a   child's   terror 
that  of  an  evil  child  somehow  made 
believable.    This  could  more  reason- 
ably be  compared  to  The  Tall,  Dark 
Man  by  Anne  Chamberlain  though' 
that,  too,  was  less  violent  and  more 
convincing.    Still,  this  won't  be  put 
clown  unfinished. 

Rinehart,  S3 

The   Joy   Train,    by    Douglas   Fair- 
bairn. 

A  credible  and  moving  story  about 
a  contemporary  young  American  (we 
have  had  so  many  young  Britishers 
lately)  trying  to  alone  for  having 
forged  his  name  on  paintings  that 
were  not  his  own.  The  background 
of  the  story  and  the  method  of  atone- 
ment are  unusual,  even  bizarre,  but 
as  Mr.  Fairbairn  describes  them  they 
seem  perfectly  possible.  His  ear 
for  dialogue  is  excellent;  his  picture 
of  the  boy's  very  normal  middle- 
class    family    and    the    family    rcla- 


91 


BOOKS     IN     BRIEF 

Lionships  is  remarkably  convincing; 
and  the  boy's  struggle  and  deter- 
jmination  to  find  himself  and  become 
painter  have  real  moral  stature. 

Simon  &  Schuster,  $3.50 


la  pa 


The  Gentleman  from  Indianapolis: 
A  Treasury  of  Booth  Tarkington, 

edited  by  John  Beecroft. 

This  rich  harvest  includes  three 
complete  novels-Alice  Adams,  Pen- 
rod,  and  The  Magnificent  Amber- 
sons;  seven  short  stories;  and  three 
excerpts  from  other  novels  (Gentle 
Julia,  Seventeen,  and  Little  Oruie). 
iAII  are  in  "Tark's"  best  manner,  all 
have  Indiana  backgrounds.  Enough 
said  to  assure  readers  of  delightful 
nostalgia.  Literary  Guild  choice  for 
IDecember.  Doubleday,  $4.95 

NON-FICTION 

Those  who  are  lucky  enough  to 
ihave  Christmas  money  and  a  taste 
for  art  books  are  twice  blessed,  for 
the  choice  this  season  is  impressive. 

Sienese  Painting,  by  Enzo  Carli. 

The  rise  of  the  Sienese  School  of 
painting  was  an  unusual  phenome- 
non and  this  history  of  it  (1250- 
1500')  shows  how  and  why.  It  had 
neither  a  political  nor  a  commercial 
culture  behind  it,  but  seems  to  have 
sprung  spontaneously  from  the  life 
of  the  people.  Their  houses  with 
their  simple  interiors,  their  bright 
quilts,  the  animals  and  flowers  they 
knew  (see  the  birds  in  Sassetta's 
lovely  "The  Journey  of  the  Magi"), 
their  countryside,  appear  again  and 
again  in  these  religious  pictures. 
And  the  colors  and  the  gold  they 
loved  are  beautifully  reproduced  in 
62  full  color  illustrations.  (There 
are  137  in  all.)  Professor  Carli's  text 
is  succinct  and  illuminating.  A  large, 
beautiful,   pleasurable   book. 

New  York  Graphic  Society,  $25 

The  Life  of  Christ  in  Masterpieces 
of  Art  and  the  Words  of  the  New 
Testament,  selection  and  introduc- 
tion by  Marvin  Ross,  Chief  Curator 
of  the  Lew  Angeles  County  Museum 
and  Curator  of  Medieval  Art  at  the 
Walters  Art  Gallery  in  Baltimore 
and  Brooklyn. 

Every  page  of  ibis  book  shows  the 
care  and  discrimination  with  which 
it  has  been  assembled.  The  selec- 
tions of  text  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment are  beautiful  and  moviii";  the 


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mailing  charges. 

□  Charge  □  Enclosed     (Mailing    charges    paid    h) 
publisher;   same  guarantee  applies.) 


Name 
Address 
City    ... 


(Please   Print 


.Zone.  .  .  .  State 


-_l 


92 

color  reproductions  of  paintings, 
mosaics,  stained  glass  (some  of  them 
never  in  color  before)  are  magnifi- 
cent; and  the  i\]n'  and  decoration  of 
the  pages  are  pleasures  in  themseh  es. 
Harper,  $10 

A  Testament,  by  Frank  Lloyd 
Wright. 

The  "grand  old  man"  of  Amei  i(  an 
architecture  writes  in  language  as 
forthright  as  his  buildings  what 
amounts  to  two  books,  the  first,  a 
brief  but  pointed  story  of  his  long 
and  astonishing  life,  and  the  second, 
an  exposition  of  The  New  Archi- 
tecture. The  text  is  interspersed 
with  over  200  remarkable  drawings 
and  photographs  of  his  houses, 
schools,  office  buildings,  and  hotels- 
drawings  often  juxtaposed  to  the 
completed  structure.  The  vitality  of 
the  whole  is  extraordinary.  The 
statements  are  often  fiat,  on  the  sur- 
face and  stimulating  to  a  degree  in 
the  ideas  that  follow  in  their  wake. 
"Art  can  be  no  restatement"— or  "He 
who  knows  the  difference  between 
excess  and  exuberance  is  aware  of 
the  nature  of  the  poetic  principle." 
An  exciting  and  beautiful  book, 
exuberant,  I  think,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  term.       Horizon,  §12.50 

The  Museum  of  Modern  Art's  ex- 
hibit of  modern  German  art  of  the 
twentieth  century  makes  these  three 
books  particularly  timely. 

German  Expressionism  and  Ab- 
stract Art,  by  Charles  Kuhn  and 
Jakob  Rosenberg. 

This  book  is  a  rather  specialized 
study  based  on  the  pictures  and 
prints  that  are  housed  in  the 
museums  at  Harvard.  It  includes  a 
survey  of  modern  German  art  by 
Professor  Kuhn;  an  essay  on  the 
twentieth-century  German  graphic 
arts  by  Dr.  Rosenberg;  a  most  useful 
chronological  table  of  the  history  of 
German  art  since  1900;  and  a  cata- 
logue of  German  art  at  Harvard.  It 
contains  218  illustrations  but  except 
for  the  frontispiece,  they  are  not  in 
color.  Harvard,  $8.75 

Modem  German  Painting,  by  Hans 
Konrad   Roethal. 

As  the  title  indicates,  this  volume, 
which  boasts  sixty  color  plates,  con- 
centrates on  painting  and  drawings. 
It  contains  a  more  extensive  history 


BOOKS     IN     BRIEF 

of  German  twentieth-century  pann- 
ing, biographical  sketches,  and  bib- 
liographies, and  because  the  geo- 
graphical choice  of  pictures  is  less 
limited  than  the  Harvard  book  it 
is  perhaps  more  fun  for  the  general 
leader.  Reynai,  $7.50 

German  Art  of  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury, by  Werner  Haftmann,  Allied 
Hent/en,  William  S.  Liebeinian. 
Edited  by  Andrew  Carnduff  Ritchie. 
Dr.  Haftmann  discusses  painting. 
Dr.  Hent/en  sculpture,  and  Mi. 
Liebeinian  prints  in  this  beautiful 
and  compact  volume  carrying  178 
illustrations,  48  in  color.  Sponsored 
by  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art  in 
collaboration  with  The  City  Art 
Museum  of  St.  Louis,  and  celebrat- 
ing the  extensive  show  of  German 
painting,  sculpture,  and  prints  which 
has  just  been  shown  at  the  Museum 
in  New  York  and  now  moves  to  St. 
Louis,  the  book  is  a  distinguished 
contribution  to  the  history  of  Ger- 
man art  and  of  related  European  art 
movements  for  fifty  years. 

Simon  &  Schuster,  $9.50 

The  Changing  Face  of  Beauty,  by 

Madge  Garland. 

More  than  400  pictures  illustrate 
4,000  years  of  beautiful  women— 
their  faces,  figures,  hair-do's,  and  the 
conventions  that  changed  them  from 
century  to  century.  Ears  and  eye- 
brows appear  and  disappear,  bosoms 
wax  and  wane,  waistlines  go  up  and 
down,  and  the  pictures  are  chosen 
with  discrimination  and  a  real  sense 
of  style.   Fascinating  and  fun. 

Barrows,  $10 

And  then  there  are  three  eye-fill- 
ing, notable  books  on  American 
places,  art,  and  crafts. 

The  American  Heritage  Book  of 
Great  Historic  Places,  by  the  editors 
of  The  American  Heritage. 

Three  thousand  places  important 
in  the  building  of  this  country  are 
here  accounted  for  either  in  pictures 
(700)  or  text.  The  book  is  divided 
into  nine  geographic  sections  with 
maps  for  each,  and  the  photographs 
and  drawings,  carefully  selected  and 
displayed,  are  beautiful,  instructive, 
and  somehow  moving.  The  book  has 
been  on  the  best-seller  list  almost 
from  the  day  it  was  published. 

Simon  &  Schuster,  $12.50 


Three  Hundred  Years  of  Americai 
Painting,  by  Alexander  Eliot,  Ar 
Editor  ol  Tunc.  Introduction  b' 
John  Walker,  Director  of  the  N 
tional  Gallery. 

Three  hundred  pages  of  distin 
guished  text  and  pictures  (250  i 
color).  Published  by  Time  and  dis, 
tributed  by  Random  House.    Sl.'i.5( 

America's  Arts  and  Skills,  by  th< 
editors  of  Life.  With  an  introduc 
tion  by  Charles  F.  Montgomery 
Director  of  the  Henry  Francis  Du 
Pont  Winieithiu  Museum,  Wintei 
thur,  Delaware. 

From  the  earliest  primitive  toolJ 
to  the  age  of  electronics  and  modern 
architecture  the  development  ol 
American  arts  and  skills  is  shownj 
in  spectacular  color  photographs  and 
explained   in   text  and  captions. 

Dutton,  $13.93 

FORECAST 

Memoirs  of  Professionals 

Professional  men  and  women  in 
all  walks  of  life  are  either  writing 
their  autobiographies  or  having  biog- 
raphies written  about  them  in  1958. 
Pennsylvania  Supreme  Court  Justice 
Michael  A.  Musmano  has  written 
Verdict!  The  Adventures  of  thei 
Voting  Laioyer  in  the  Brown  Suit,  a. 
book  of  reminiscences  which  Double- 
day  will  publish  in  February.  In  the, 
same  month  they  will  also  launch 
Doctor  in  Love  by  that  adventuring 
doctor,  Richard  Gordon,  who  also 
wrote  Doctor  in  the  House,  and1 
Doctor  at  Sea.  Lt. -General  Sir  John] 
Bagot  Glubb,  professional  soldier' 
and  former  Commander  of  the  Arab 
Legion  has  told  his  story,  A  Soldier 
with  the  Arabs,  and  Harper  will 
publish  it  in  February  too.  In  the! 
same  monththey  will  publish  A  Joy\ 
of  Gardening  by  V.  Sackville-West, 
who  combines  in  it  the  talents  of  a 
professional  writer  and  near-profes- 
sional gardener,  using  her  experience 
in  her  garden  at  Sissinghurst  Castle 
in  Kent  as  a  background  for  a  special 
book  for  Americans.  Putnam  an- 
nounces The  Arctic  Year,  by  the 
arctic  explorer  Peter  Freuchen  and 
the  Danish  naturalist  Dr.  Finn  Salo- 
monsen— a  heavily  illustrated  month- 
by-month  account  of  life  in  the 
Arctic  Zone,  for  publication  in 
February,  IGY.  The  professional's 
lot  is  not  a  private  one. 


Will  Your  Next  Vacation  Really  Be  Something  to  Remember? 


The  surest  way  to  guarantee  a  new,  different,  and  exciting  vacation 
is  to  learn  the  hundreds  of  things  you  can  do  and  the  places  you 
can  visit  on  the  money  you  want  to  spend. 

Norman  Ford,  founder  of  the  world-known  Globe  Trotters  Club, 
tells  you  that  in  his  book,  Where  to  Vacation  on  a  Shoestring.  This 
is  the  man  who  has  spent  a  lifetime  searching  for  ways  to  get  more 
for  your  money  in  vacations  and  travel. 

In  bis  book,  you  learn 

— about     low-cost     summer     paradises,     farm     vacations,     vacations     on     far-off 

islands,   on   boats    drifting   down   lazy    streams    while   you   fish. 
— about   vacations   at    world-famous   beaches,   under   palm   and   eucalyptus   trees, 

in   government-subsidized  vacation   resorts,   in   Indian   country,   along   rugged 

coastlines,  on  ships  and  by  rail. 
— about   dude   ranches   you   can   afford,  what   lo    see,   do,    and   how   to   save   at 

national   parks   and   in   the  cities   most   Americans   want  to  visit. 


—about  low-cost  sailing  ship  cruises,  houseboat  vacations  in  the  North  Woods, 
fantastically  low-cost  mountain  vacations,  the  unknown  vacation  wonderlandi 
almost   at   your    front   door. 

How  to  stop  saying — 

"I  Always  Spend  Too  Much  On  My  Vacation" 

Of  course,  Norman  Ford  knows  where  to  get  real  vacation  bargains  in  all 
America,  from  Maine  to  California,  and  in  Canada,  Mexico,  etc.  At  no  time 
does  he  ask  you  to  spend  a  lot  of  money  to  enjoy  yourself,  no  matter  how 
really  different  and  exciting  is  the  vacation  you  choose  through  his  experi- 
enced advice.  Always,  he  tells  you  the  many  things  you  can  do  within  your 
budget  and  how  to  get  more  for  your  money  (if  you  travel  by  car,  he  shows 
how  most   auto   parties   can  save    S6   or   $7   a   day). 

You  can't  help  but  learn  something  that  is  just  meant  for  you.  Yet,  Where  to 
Vacation  on  a  Shoestring  costs  only  SI.  To  make  sure  your  next  vacation  will  be 
something  to  talk  about,  get    the  facts  now.     Use  the  coupon  to  order. 


'Round  the  World  on  a  Shoestring 

If  you  know  the  seldom-advertised  ways  of  reaching  foreign  countries,  you 
don't  need  fantastic  sums  of  money  in  order  to  travel.  You  could  spend 
$500-51000  on  a  one-way  luxury  steamer  to  Buenos  Aires — but  do  you  know 
you  can  travel  all  the  way  to  Argentina  through  colorful  Mexico,  the  Andes, 
Peru,  etc.,  by  bus  and  rail  for  just  $109  in  fares? 

You  can  spend  $5000  on  a  luxury  cruise  around  the  world.  But  do  you 
know  you  can  travel  around  the  world  via  deluxe  freighter  for  only  a  fourth 
the  cost  and  that  there  are  a  dozen  other  round  the  world  routings  for 
under  $1000? 

There  are  two  ways  to  travel — like  a  tourist,  who  spends  a  lot,  or  like  a 
traveler,  who  knows  all  the  ways  to  reach  his  destination  economically, 
comfortably,  and  while  seeing  the  most. 

Norman  Ford's  big  new  guide,  How  to  Travel  Without  Being  Rich, 
gives  you  the  traveler's  picture  of  the  world,  showing  you  the  lowest  cost, 
comfortable  ways  to  practically  any  part  of  the  world.  Page  after  page 
reveals  the  ship,  rail,  bus,  airplane  and  other  routings  that  save  you 
money  and  open  the  world  to  you. 

What  do  you  want  to  do?  Explore  the  West  Indies?  This  is  the  guide  that 
tells  you  how  to  see  them  like  an  old  time  resident  who  knows  all  the  tricks 
of  how  to  make  one  dollar  do  the  work  of  two.  Visit  Mexico?  This  is  the 
guide  that  tells  you  the  low  cost  ways  of  reaching  the  sights  (how  56c  takes 
you  via  8-passenger  automobile  as  far  as  those  not-in-the-know  pay  $5.60 
to  reach).  Roam  around  South  America?  Europe?  Any  other  part  of  the 
world?  This  is  the  guide  that  tells  you  where  and  how  to  go  at  prices  you 
can  really  afford. 

If  you've  ever  wanted  to  travel,  prove  now,  once  and  for  all,  that  travel 
is  within  your  reach.  Send  now  for  How  to  Travel  Without  Being  Rich. 
It's  a  big  book,  with  over  75,000  words,  filled  with  facts,  prices  and  routings, 
and  it's  yours  for  only  $1.50.  Even  one  little  hint  can  save  you  this  sum 
several   times  over. 


Passenger-carrying 

FREIGHTERS  are  the  secret 

of  low-cost  travel 

Yes,  for  no  more  than  you'd  spend  at  a  resort,  you  can  take  a  never-to-be- 
forgotten  cruise  to  Rio  and  Buenos  Aires.  Or  through  the  West  Indies 
or  along  the  St.  Lawrence  River  to  French  Canada.  In  fact,  trips  to 
almost  everywhere  are  within  your  means. 

And  what  accommodations  you  get :  large  rooms  with  beds  (not 
bunks),  probably  a  private  bath,  lots  of  good  food  and  plenty 
of  relaxation  as  you  speed  from  port  to  port. 

Depending  upon  how  fast  you  want  to  go,  a  round  the  world  cruise 
can  be  yours  for  as  little  as  $250-$300  a  month.  And  there  are  shorter 
trips.  Fast,  uncrowded  voyages  to  England,  France,  the  Mediterranean ; 
two  or  three  vacations  up  and  down  the  Pacific  Coast  or  elsewhere.  Name 
the  port  and  the  chances  are  you  can  find  it  listed  in  Travel  Routes 
Around  the  World.  This  is  the  book  that  names  the  lines,  tells  where 
they  go,  how  much  they  charge,  briefly  describes  accommodations.  Hundreds 
of  thousands  of  travelers  all  over  the  world  swear  by  it.  Travel  editors  and 
travel  writers  say  "To  learn  how  to  travel  for  as  little  as  you'd  spend  at 
a  resort  get  Travel  Routes  Around  the  World." 

It's  yours  for  just  $1,  and  this  fact-filled  128-page  book  includes  prac- 
tically every  passenger-carrying  service  starting  from  or  going  to  New 
York,  Canada,  New  Orleans,  the  Pacific  Coast,  Mexico,  South  America, 
England,  France,  the  Mediterranean,  Africa,  the  Indies,  Australia,  the 
South  Seas,  Japan,  Hawaii,  etc.  There's  a  whole  section  called  "How  to 
See  the  World   at  Low  Cost,"   plus  pages  and   pages  of  maps. 

A  big  $1  worth,  especially  as  it  can  open  the  way  to  more  travel  than 
you  ever  thought  possible.     For  your   copy,   simply   fill   out  coupon. 


WHERE  WILL  YOU  GO 
IN  FLORIDA? 

IF  YOU  WANT  A  VACATION  YOU  CAN  AFFORD 

Florida  needn't  be  expensive — not  if  you  know  just  where  to  go  for  whatever  you 
seek  in  Florida.  And  if  there's  any  man  who  can  give  you  the  facts  you  want  it's 
Norman  Ford,  founder  of  the  world-famous  Globe  Trotters  Club.  (Yes,  Florida  is 
his   home    whenever   he    isn't    traveling!) 

His  big  book,  Norman  Ford's  Florida,  tells  you,  first  of  all,  road  by  road,  mile 
by  mile,  everything  you'll  find  in  Florida,  whether  you're  on  vacation,  or  looking 
over   job,   business,   real    estate,    or   retirement    prospects. 

Always,  he  names  the  hotels,  motels,  and  restaurants  where  you  can  stop  for  the 
best  accommodations  and  meals  at  the  price  you  want  to  pay.  For  that  longer 
vacation,  if  you  let  Norman  Ford  guide  you,  you'll  find  a  real  "paradise" — just 
the    spot    which    has    everything    you    want. 

Of  course,  there's  much  more  to  this  big  book. 

IF  YOU  WANT  A  JOB  OR  A  HOME  IN  FLORIDA 

Norman  Ford  tells  you  just  where  to  head.  His  talks  with  hundreds  of  personnel 
managers,  business  men,  real  estate  operators,  slate  officials,  etc.,  let  him  pinpoint 
the  towns  you  want  to  know  about  if  you're  going  to  Florida  for  a  home,  a  job  with 
a  future,  or  a  business  of  your  own.  If  you've  ever  wanted  to  run  a  tourist  court 
or  own  an  orange  grove,  he  tells  you  today's  inside  story  of  these  popular  invest- 
ments. 

IF  YOU  WANT  TO  RETIRE  ON  A  SMALL  INCOME 

Norman  Ford  tells  you  exactly  where  you  can  retire  now  on  the  money  you've  got, 
whether  it's  a  liltle  or  a  lot.  (If  you  need  a  part-lime  or  seasonal  job  to  help  out 
your  income,  he  tells  you  where  to  pick  up  extra  income.)  Because  Norman  Ford 
always  tells  you  where  life  in  Florida  is  plesantest  on  a  small  income,  he  can 
help    you    take    life    easy    now. 

Yes,  no  matter  what  you  seek  in  Florida — whether  you  want  to  retire,  vacation, 
get  a  job,  buy  a  home,  or  star!  a  business,  Norman  Ford's  Florida  gives  you 
the  facts  you  need  to  find  exactly  what  you  want.  Yet  this  big  book  with  plenty 
of  maps  and  well  over  100,000  words  sells  for  only  $2 — only  a  fraction  of  the 
money   you'd   spend   needlessly   if   you   went   to   Florida   blind. 

For   your   copy    fill   out   coupon    below. 

fill  Out  and  Send  at  Once 
for  Quick  Delivery 


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□  Where  to  Vacation  on  a  Shoestring.     $1. 

□  Norman  Ford's  Florida.     $2. 

□  How  to  Travel  Without  Being  Rich.    $1.50. 

□  Travel  Routes  Around  the  World.    $1. 

□   Special  Offer:   All  books  above  for  $5. 


City     and     Slate. 


rAe /^RECORDINGS 


Edward  Tatnall  Canby 


slowly,  almost  to  the  point  of  stodginegj 
on  Inst  hearing.  ( A.  corresponding  group 
from  the  Vienna  Philharmonic  plays 
it  on  London  I.I.  1191.)    This  recording 

has  .1   fine  sound   though  the  string  bass 
seems  over-heavy  and  there  is  a  trace  of  I 
low -pitched   hum    that    will    be    audible] 
on  larger  speakers. 


GENERATIONS     OF     CHANGING     TASTE 


Beethoven:    Symphony    —  3    <"Eroica"). 
Cleveland    Orchestra,    Szell.     Epi<     1( 
3585. 

\  East,  yet  eloquenl  "Eroica,"  this  one, 
and  thoroughly  enjoyable,  casting  some 
pleasant!)  fresh  light  on  the  great  piece's 
inner  shaping— a  quick-paced,  panorama 

view,  on  tiptoe.  This  is  not  one  ol  those 
teeth-gnashing  exercises  in  modern  vio- 
lence—Szell  is  too  much  ol  a  good  Cen- 
tral European  to  tamper  with  its  Kiic 
qualities  and  the  symphon)  sings  where 
it  should.  But  the  sharp,  syncopated 
chords  are  quick  swipes  ibis  time,  rather 
than  the  usual  weighty  thundei  blows, 
the  dissonant  trumpet  is  deliberately 
shocking,  almost  triumphantly  so.  and 
the  grand  climax  positively  crows  with 
accomplishment. 

Beethoven,  like  Bach  and  the  othei 
big  ones,  has  enough  in  him  lot  gener- 
ations of  changing  taste  to  exploit:  and 
maybe  we  are  about  to  see  a  new  renais- 
sance lor  his  music  in  new  terms.  The 
older  era  made  much  talk  ol  his  cosmic 
architecture  but  didn't  do  much  about 
it  in  the  playing.  This  symphony  in  par- 
ticular has  too  often  been  dragged  out. 
ponderously,  played  tor  every  detail  ol 
monumental  grandeur  along  the  way. 
But  lew  listeners,  howevei  impressed, 
can  hold  onto  the  larger  concept  ol  the 
piece  in  such  performances.  This  was 
the  Wagnerian  approach;  you  were  hyp- 
notized by  the  very  immensity  of  the 
thing  and,   sometimes,   you   went    oil    to 


sleep,  to  wake  up  and  cheer  at  the  cud. 
The  wonderfid  thing  is  that  Beetho- 
ven's  architecture  is  there,  and  it  can  be 
made  audible,  upon  demand,  in  mysteri- 
ously ever-new  ways.  Our  present  taste 
for  clean  lines  and  airy  spaces  does 
Beethoven  no  harm  at  all.  The  lug 
shapes  aie  undeniably  and  ncwh  evi- 
dent, all  clean  metal  and  glass  against  a 
serene  blue  sky. 

Beethoven:  Septet,  Op.  20.  Chamber 
Music  Ensemble  of  the  Berlin  Phil- 
harmonic Orch.  Decca  DL  9934. 

This  colorful  and  beautifully  written  lit- 
tle divertimento  lor  wind  and  string 
solos  was  Beethoven's  most  popular 
salon  piece  during  his  lifetime— until 
lie  could  no  longer  stand  the  mention 
ol  it.  (But  at  first  he  was  extremely 
proud  of  the  work  and  rightly.)  It  is 
music,  so  to  speak,  for  social  listening: 
there's  nothing  emotionally  profound 
about  it  and  there  should  not  have 
been— Beethoven,  remember,  lived  in  a 
time  when  music  was  written  to  fit  the 
occasion,  rather  than  the  composer's 
(  motional  whim.  It  serves  its  purpose  as 
well  now  as  it  did  then— easy,  light  en- 
tertainment, put  together  with  immense 
skill. 

The  North  German  performance  is 
full  of  life  and  vigor,  if  not  always  sc  rup- 
ulously  clear  in  the  details;  it  makes  an 
interesting  contrast  to  the  present 
Viennese  tradition,  which  takes  it  more 


WORTH   LOOKING   INTO   .    .   . 


Prokofieff:  Cello  Concerto.  Milhaud: 
Cello  Concerto  #1.  Janos  Starker;  Phil- 
harmonia,  Susskind.  Angel  35418. 

Mendelssohn:  Cello  Sonata  in  D.  Strauss: 
Cello  Sonata  in  F.  Andre  Navarra,  cello, 
Ernest  Lush,  piano.    Capitol    P18045. 

Beethoven:  Diabelli  Variations,  Op.  120. 
Leonard   Shure,    piano.    Epic   LC   3382. 

Franck:  Piece  Heroique;  Three  Cho- 
rales. Edouard  Commette,  Organ  Cathe- 
dral St.   Jean  de  Lyon.    Angi  I    15369. 

Selections  from  the  Sacred  Pontifical 
Liturgy      ol      the      Russian      Orthodox 


Church,  Choir  of  the  Russian  Orthodox 
Cath.  of  Paris,  Spassky.    Epic  LC  3384. 

Col.  World  Library  of  Folk  and  Primi- 
tive Music,  Vol  XV:  Northern  and  Cen- 
tral Italy;  Vol.  XVI:  Southern  Italy 
and  the  Islands,  eel.  Alan  Lomax.  Co- 
lumbia KL  5173,  5174. 

Puccini:  La  Boheme.  Gigli,  Albanese, 
el  <d.  (La  Scala  production,  from  pre- 
war 78s.)  His  Master's  Voice  513/514 
(2)  Imported. 

Sounds  of  Steam  Railroading.  (Norfolk 
&  Western)  O.  Winston  Link  Produc- 
tions, 58  E.  34th  St.  New  York  16,  N.  Y. 


Haydn:  Symphony  #%.  Mozart:  Sym- 
phony #35  ("Haffnei").  Detroit  Syna 
phony,   Paray.    Mercury   MG5Q129. 

Paul  Paray,  an  irrepressible  Frenchman 
of  the  older  generation,  does  astonishing 
ind  sometimes  outlandish  things  to  such 
pompous  Teutonics  as  Wagner  and 
Liszt,  lie  is  always  highly  musical,  and 
in  his  handling  ol  these  earlier  Austri- 
•  nis.  Paray  turns  out  to  be  a  first-rate 
stylist,  with  all  the  musical  fervor  ol  his 
other  work  and,  in  this  case,  very  little 
that  is  eccentric.  The  phrasing  is  beau- 
tifully intense— exaggerated,  but  at  the 
right  places:  the  music  dances,  bounces, 
is  full  of  energy.  And  Haydn,  who  too 
often  is  bounced  cutely,  is  full  of  life 
and.  il  you  will,  seriousness:  what  is 
particularly  nice  is  the  concertante ,  semi- 
intimate  style  of  playing,  with  much  solo 
feeling. 

Only  minor  drawback  is  the  Detroit 
orchestra's  inability  always  to  keep  up 
with  the  letter  ol  Paray's  intentions. 
There  is  some  rough  playing  here  and 
there.  But  we  have  had  far  too  much 
smooth,  soulless  perfection  in  our  big 
orchestras.  This  recording   is  all  soul. 

Haydn:  Symphony  #45  ("Farewell'');] 
Symphony  #82  ("The  Bear").  Southwest 
German  Radio  Orch..  Roll  Reinhardt] 
Vox   PL   10310. 

Evidently  one  may  be  born  in  Heidel- 
berg, as  was  Roll  Reinhardt.  and  grow 
up  to  be  at  thirty  a  mature  and  under-] 
standing  conductor  of  Haydn.  Mosd 
young  conductors  can't  touch  him.  It 
isn't  easy  to  believe  that  these  suaveJ 
wise  performances  are  from  a  youngj 
leader,  espee  ially  since  the)  are  clearly! 
not  carbon-copy  repertory  readings  butj 
the  products  of  individual  thinking  and 
intuition. 

The  symphonies  are  not  played  with 
technical  perfection;  there  are.  again,  a 
good  many  unfinished  edges.  But  the] 
whole  feeling,  lor  these  very  unlike 
works,  is  on  the  way  to  being  deeply 
right.  In  the  later  one,  composed  fori 
Paris,  there  is  both  that  joyous,  bustling 
flamboyance— sounding  so  much  like 
Mo/art— that  was  typical  of  Parisian, 
style,  and  the  wise,  untroubled  pro-i 
iundity  of  the  later  Haydn.  Thescj| 
things  Rolf  Reinhardt  hears  as  Btunc 
Walter  might. 

And    in    the    "Farewell,"    one   of    the 
greatest  of  small  symphonies,   he   hears 
the    first    movement's    agitated    module 


: 


Here  is 


where  FDS  pays  off! 


You're  looking  at  an  ant's-eye  view  of  a  diamond 
needle  in  a  record  groove.  It's  magnified  250  times 
to  illustrate  the  enormous  margin  for  error  in  the 
playback  of  an  ordinary  recording. 

But  the  symbol  next  to  it  is  never  put  on  ordinary 
recordings.  It  reads  "Full  Dimensional  Sound"  and 
when  you  see  it  on  the  upper  right  hand  corner  of  a 
Capitol  album  you  know-— 


1.  An  artist  of  the  first  rank  has  given  an  exceptional 
performance. 

2.  This  performance  has  been  flawlessly  recorded  by 
Capitol's  creative  staff  and  sound  engineers. 

3.  It  has  been  judged  by  the  record-rating  "Jury"  as 
being  worthy  of  the  "FDS"  seal — denoting  the 
highest  fidelity  known  to  the  recorder's  art. 

No  other  symbol  promises  so  much.  And  delivers  it. 


Incomparable  High  Fidelity — Full  Dimensional  Sound  Albums 


9G 


THE     NEW     RECORDINGS 


tion  ancl,  in  the  second,  the  strange, 
thin,  three-part  counterpoint,  the  spare 
lines  of  melody  stretching  into  Fathom- 
lessly distant  tonal  relationships;  he  is 
aware  of  the  richness  and  the  peace  ol 
tin1  last  movement,  where  the  instru- 
ments depart  one  by  one,  leaving  a 
string  quartet,  then  two  violins  alone,  to 
i.un    the  unbroken  spell  to  its  end. 

Haydn:  Symphony  #41  ("Trailer  Sym- 
phonic"); #49  ("La  Passione").  Vienna 
State  Opera  Orch..  Scherchen.  West- 
minster XWN   18613. 

One  ol  the  paradoxes  ol  nineteenth-cen- 
tury Romanticism  is  that  it  was  anti- 
Romantic  toward  its  immediate  Eore 
bears,  almost  jealously  so.  Mozart  and 
Haydn  lived  in  the  periwig  era  and 
their  music  was  played  in  periwig 
fashion;  only  a  few  chosen  "prophetic" 
works— mostly  the  minor  keys— were  al- 
lowed a  place  in  Romanticism  and  a 
Romantic-style    play  ing. 

And  so,  paradoxically,  a  twentieth 
century  task  is  the  restoration— to  Ro- 
manticism—of much  in  Haydn  ancl 
Mo/art,  as  we  must  restore  Beethoven 
to  classicism.  Scherchen's  Haydn,  early 
and  late,  has  been  a  revelation  in  this 
respect  and  Westminster's  wholesale  re- 
issue of  his  recordings  is  of  great  value. 

These  two  are  from  that  short  pie- 
Romantic  time  of  storm  and  stress 
around  1770,  the  time  ol  the  "Farewell" 
and  the  fact  that  the  later  Haydn  is  less 
outwardly  passionate  (though  in- 
wardly more  deeply  Romantic)  makes 
them  particularly  interesting.  See  espe- 
cially Scherchen's  late  Haydn,  Sym- 
phonies  93-104. 

Mozart:  Symphony  #35  ("Haffner"). 
Berlioz:  Waverley  Overture;  Three  Ex- 
cerpts from  "The  Damnation  of  Faust." 

Orchestra  drawn  from  Alumni  of  the 
National  Orchestral  Association,  Leon 
Barzin.  Columbia  ML  5176. 

This  recording,  played  by  members  of 
the  400-odd  alumni  of  this  splendid 
training  orchestra,  commemorates  the 
organization's  twenty-fifth  anniversary, 
under  Leon  Barzin's  direction.  The  Na- 
tional is  a  unique  orchestra,  that  ac- 
cepts via  scholarship  youngsters  on 
their  way  to  the  orchestras  of  our  coun- 
try and  gives  them  a  year  or  so  of  rigor- 
ous practical  training— rehearsals,  con- 
certs, broadcasts.  Mr.  Barzin,  who  now 
conducts  the  New  York  City  Ballet  as 
well,  has  exactly  the  right  humorous, 
disciplinarian  approach  to  the  young 
players. 

As  a  performance,  by  men  from  doz- 
ens of  musical  posts  throughout  the 
country,  this  was  surely  unusual,  a  sort 
of  professional  convention  and  Old 
Home    Week.    As    music,    the    result    is 


inevitably    colored     by    professionalism. 

1 1  is  both  remarkably  virtuoso  and 
musically  unconvincing.  It  is  a  display 
ol  graduate  orchestral  technique,  lor  the 
old  schoolmaster:  ii  reflects,  as  well,  all 
the  prejudices  and  narrownesses  ol  the 
practicing  orchestral  musician— and  this 
includes  Mr.  Barzin  himself.  Mozart 
.ml  Berlioz  are  pretty  much  lost  en- 
route.  The  "Haffner"  is  played  from  the 
original  manuscript,  owned  by  the  Ass<> 
ciation.  You  will  not  detect  important 
differences.  The  sound  is  conventionally 
big-orchestra,  expertly  polished  and 
quite  routine.  I  he  Berlioz  is  the  same— 
much  display  and  little  ol  that  native 
electricality  that  makes  the  music  worth 
hearing. 

Ml  ol  which  is  no  slur  on  the  Na- 
tional, bin  rather,  a  reflection  on  the 
state  of  American  orchestral  playing 
today.  It  was  never  the  National's  busi- 
ness  to  reform  it. 

Schubert:  The  Death  of  Lazarus.  Soloists, 
NDR  Chorus,  Philharmonia  Orch.  Ham- 
burg.   Winograd.    MOM    F3526. 

The  first  act  ol  an  uncompleted  Schu- 
bert opera  is  here  brought  to  perform- 
ance—it was  hailed  by  Alfred  Einstein  as 
a  neglected  masterpiece  in  his  Schubert 
(Oxford,  1951).  The  music  won't  be  easy 
for  most  listeners,  but  it  is  without  a 
doubt  remarkable.  How  the  work  could 
have  survived  as  an  opera  is  hard  to 
imagine;  there  was  never  such  a  quiet, 
gentle,  inward-turning  opera  as  this, 
concerned  entirely  with  an  intimate  and 
very  personal  death-bed  scene,  where 
Lazarus  talks  with  his  closest  family  and 
friends,  and  dies  in  theii  midst.  No 
heroics,  no  dramatics. 

But  those  who  know  how  poignantly 
Schubert  can  turn  the  simplest  melody, 
with  the  simplest  of  chords,  will  under- 
stand how  this  gentle  piece  can  grow 
upon  the  listener  who  has  it  in  his  home 
to  hear,  far  from  the  unlikely  stage.  It 
is,  somewhat  incidentally,  a  pioneer  work 
in  respect  to  the  free  blending  of  aria 
and  recitative,  anticipating  even  Wag- 
ner's "Lohengrin."  But  Wagner  made  a 
lot  more  noise. 

A  small,  dedicated  cast  of  singers,  none 
of  very  great  power,  manages  rather 
beautifully  to  project  the  sense  and  feel- 
ing of  this  unusual  music.  The  orchestra 
plays  it  warmly  as  well. 

Milhaud:  Le  Pau,vre  Matelot  (1926). 
Milhaud:       Les       Malheurs      d'Orphee 

(1924).  Jacqueline  Brumaire,  Bernard 
Demigny,  Jean  Giraudeau,  Xavier  De- 
praz,  et  al.  Members  of  L'Orch.du 
Theatre  Nat.  de  L'Opera,  Milhaud. 
Westminster  XWN  11030;  XWN  11031. 

Here  are  two  apt  and  timely  releases- 
timely    in    that,    after    thirty-odd    years, 


these  beautifully  wrought  little  chamber 
operettas  seem  to  hit  the  spot  now  as 
they  never  could  have  before.  Just 
quaintly  nostalgi(  enough  ol  the  'twen- 
ties to  neutralize  any  left-over  trace  of 
radicalism,  they  are  piquantly  dissonant 
and  yet  tuneful,  soulful,  remarkably  pro-' 
lountl. 

One  of  them  is  the  story  of  Orpheus 
and  Eurydice  transposed  into  Provence, 
where  he  is  a  local  druggist-herb-doctor 
and  she  a  gypsy,  fleeing  her  revengeful 
tribe.  She  dies,  he  is  killed  by  her  three 
sisters,  unresisting,  in  the  midst  ol  a 
sentence;  the  scene  is  over  almost  as  it 
begins. 

The  other  story,  a  shocker  in  its 
double-take  at  the  end,  has  a  faithful 
wife  awaiting  her  sailor  husband  who 
went  to  sea  for  a  fortune;  he  returns, 
masquerades  as  a  rich  stranger  who  says 
the  husband  will  soon  be  back,  penni- 
less; the  wile  murders  him  in  the  night 
for  his  money  and.  never  knowing,  goes 
back  to  her  vigil,  happy.  Jean  Cocteau 
i-  the  author  of  this  one. 

The  performances  under  Milhaud  are 
dedicated,  all-French,  beautifully  cast, 
and  superbly  good  in  the  singing  and 
playing. 

Dukas:  Sorcerer's  Apprentice.  Wein- 
berger: Polka  and  Fugue.  Liszt:  Les  Pre- 
ludes. Strauss:  Dance  of  the  Seven  Veils. 

N.  Y.  Philharmonic,  Mitropoulos.  Co- 
lumbia   ML   5198. 

This  is  a  sad  display  lor  a  top  orchestra 
and  great  conductor,  dreadfully  wrong 
from  beginning  to  end.  One  can  only 
sit  back  and  speculate  as  to  what  hap- 
pened   and    how. 

The  titles,  at  least,  make  the  general 
intention  clear  enough.  They  are  war 
horses,  chosen  for  an  intended  hi-fi  im- 
pact, as  are  most  such  discs  nowadays. 
They  are  surely  not  Mitropoulos'  fa- 
vorites, or  specialties  of  the  orchestra. 

The  whole  thing  falls  dismally  be- 
tween two  stools.  Hi-fi  it  is,  but  gro- 
tesquely so,  I'm  tempted  to  say  almost 
amateurishly;  the  balance  is  atrocious 
and  generally  confusing,  as  though  some- 
body had  opened  the  wrong  mike.  The 
beginning  of  the  "Seven  Veils"  sounds 
like  a  jazz  percussion  piece,  the  winds 
snarl  in  the  "Sorcerer,"  and  the  strings 
play  too  close,  like  hotel  salon  music,  in 
"Les  Preludes."  Indeed,  it  couldn't  be 
as  bad  as  it  sounds;  the  mikes  have  done 
the  orchestra  in. 

And  yet,  musically,  the  great  con- 
ductor seems  to  be  pulling  backwards, 
too.  It  sounds  to  me  like  passive  re- 
sistance to  a  hateful  chore. 

It's  possible  that  Columbia,  the  Phil- 
harmonic, and  Mitropoulos  are  collec- 
tively just  too  earnest,  too  high-minded, 
to  do  the  distasteful  job— in  which  case 
I   can   only   admire   them. 


.■Iftcr  office  hours  in  Puerto  Rico.  Photograph  by  Elliott  Erwitt. 


The  Executive  Life  in  Puerto  Rico 


The  other  day  somebody  questioned 
our  wisdom  in  stressing  the  good 
life  in  Puerto  Rico.  "If  life  is  so  de- 
lightful," he  said,  "how  can  you  ex- 
pect executives  to  work?" 

Well,  they  do.  Over  four  hundred 
and  fifty  U.  S.  manufacturers  have  set 
up  new  plants  on  this  sunny  island.  Their 
net  profit  on  sales  is  three  times  as  high 
as  the  average  in  the  United  States. 


These  figures  speak  volumes.  Thev  re- 
flect the  stimulus  of  Puerto  Rico's  re- 
markable Operation  Bootstrap.  They 
also  give  some  idea  of  the  extraordinary 
industrial  renaissance  that  is  attracting 
manufacturers  at  the  rate  of  three  -new 
plants  a  week. 

But  they  cannot  express  the  more 
personal  rewards  you  get  from  being 
part  of  it  all.  Hence  our  picture.  It  was 


taken  on  Luquillo  Beach.  After  a  hard 
day,  wouldn't  you  appreciate  a  sea  so 
warmly  gentle  it  doesn't  even  tickle  the 
soles  of  your  feet?  And  how  about  a 
house  in  those  green  hills? 

It's  all  within  the  bounds  of  possibil- 
ity. This  whole  idyllic  picture  is  under 
five  and  a  half  hours  from  New  York. 

©1958— Commonwealth  of  Puerto  Rico, 
579  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  17,  N.  Y. 


i    I 


,. 


I 


..v 


^ 


<ir. 


83 


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Arrive!  of  the   Fashionable  Scotch 


WHETHER  you  are  meeting  Old 
Smuggler  for  the  first  time  or 
the  thousandth  time,  its  arrival 
rightfully  rates  the  "red  carpet." 

It  is  what  Scotsmen  call  a.  fashion- 
able Scotch.  Because  il  i>  developed 
with  natience  nil  scruple — because 
it  is  distinguished  by  great  softness 
and  delicaey  of  flavour — and  because 
it  carries  on  quality  traditions  that 
date  back  to  1835. 


The  precious  character  of  Old 
Smuggler  prompts  men  to  pay  it  a 
spontaneous  and  unique  tribute 
when  it  is  poured:  "Careful,  don't 
waste  a  drop — that's  Old  Smuggler." 
II  you  have  ffol  yet  enjoyed  the 
superb  delight  oi  Old  Smuggler, 
why  not  ask  lor  it  by  name  the  next 
time?  You  will  be  richly  rewarded. 
Please  take  another  look  at  the 
bottle  to  lix  it  firmly  in  your  memory. 


Distilled,  Blended  and  Bottled  in  Scotland 
Imported  by 

W.  A.  TAYLOR  &  COMPANY,  N,  Y.,  N.  Y. 

Sole  Distributors  for  tlie  U.S.A. 

BLENDED  SCOTCH  WHISKY  •  86  PROOF 


OLD  O/V 


usm 


SCOTCH  with  a  History 


FEBRUARY  1958    ►    SIXTY  CENTS 


Harper's 


magazine 


A  Chance  to  Withdraw 
Our  Troops  in  Europe 

George  F.  Kennan 


What  Two  Lawyers  Are  Doing  to  Hollywood 

Murray  Teigh  Bloom 

How  to  Choose  a  College,  If  Any 

John  W.  Gardner 

Antibiotics:  Too  Much  of  a  Good  Thing? 

Dr.  Vernon  Knight 


/HAT  IS  ADVERTISING  GOOD  FOR 


.. 


artin  Mayer 


A  suggestion  for  a  new  theory  of  advertising  what  role 
it  really  plays  in  our  society .. .and  how  to  tell 
whether  it  is  the  hero,  the  villain,  m  merely  a  butler 


\ 


Relax  enroute  to 

Australia 

via  ssMariposa...ssMonterey 


Settle  back.  Stretch  out.  Let  cares  float  away  under 
sunny  South  Pacific  skies.  This  is  your  adventure  in 
leisure:  19  thoroughly  restful  days  on  the  Matson 
way  to  Australia,  via  Tahiti  and  New  Zealand. 

You  arrive  relaxed,  refreshed,  and  ready  for  all  the 
fun  of  this  friendly  down-under  wonderland.  Matson 
travel  does  it  every  time.  Elegant  cuisine  and  service. 
Spacious,  air-conditioned  ships.  All  accommodations 
in  First  Class,  all  with  private  bath. 

SPECIAL    SPRINGTIME    TRAVEL    OPPORTUNITIES 

Space  now  available  for  these  sailings: 
April  2,  April  27,  May  18  and  June  II 
. . .  when  the  weather  is  at  its  glorious  best  all  along  the 
route.  Sail  round  trip  by  ship,  or  return  by  air  from 
New  Zealand  or  Australia.  Or  plan  an  exciting  journey 
around  the  Pacific  or  around  the  world.  Whatever  you 
choose,  the  Mariposa  or  Monterey  is  the  perfect  beginning 
for  an  unforgettable  adventure.  See  your  Travel  Agent. 


THE  SMART  WAY 

TO  THE  SOUTH  PACIFIC  AND  HAWAII 


MATSON    NAVIGATION    COMPANY     •      THE   OCEANIC  STEAMSHIP  COMPANY 

OFFICES  :  New  York  .  Chicago  .  San  Francisco  .  Seattle 
Portland  •  Los  Angeles  •  San  Diego  •  Honolulu 


Recruiting  Telephone  Ideas  for  the  Future 


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What  will  the  telephone  of  the  future  be  like?  Key  members  of  CPPD  discuss  some  possible  models. 
Will  they  work?  Are  they  marketable?  Will  they  stand  up? 


Bell  System's  new  Customer  Products  Planning  Division 
has  the  fascinating  job  of  generating,  screening  and  testing 
new  ideas  for  ever-better  telephone  equipment  and  service. 


Here  in  this  quiet  room  is  shaped 
an  important  part  of  the  future  of 
the  telephone. 

For  here  are  gathered  together 
from  many  sources  the  hundreds 
of  new  engineering  and  styling  ideas 
. .  .  even  the  "screwball  notions"  .  .  . 
from  which  the  telephone  of  to- 
morrow will  be  developed. 

Which  are  good?  Which  are  bad? 
It  is  the  responsibility  of  the  Cus- 


tomer Products  Planning  Division  to 
find  out.  And  to  select  for  develop- 
ment and  production  those  items 
that  people  really  want. 

No  idea  seems  too  farfetched  for 
careful  consideration  by  this  hard- 
headed  but  hopeful  group. 

They  go  on  the  premise  that  even 
a  poor  idea  may  spark  a  good  one, 
and  that  you  never  know  how  good 
an  idea  is  until  you  try  it. 


So,  when  an  idea  looks  promising, 
working  models  are  developed  and 
designed  by  the  Bell  Telephone  Lab- 
oratories, built  by  Western  Electric 
Company,  and  tried  out  in  homes  or 
offices.  Thus  no  bets  are  missed,  and 
no  costly  mistakes  are  made. 

This  is  just  one  reason  for  the  suc- 
cess of  Bell  System's  continuing  pro- 
gram of  research  for  ever-better 
telephone  service. 


Working  together  to  bring  people  together 

Bell  Telephone  System 


HARPER      &      I!  R  O  T  II  K  R  S 
PUBLISHERS 

Chairman  of  the  Executive 
Committee:   CASSCANl  n  i  D 

Chaii  man  of  the  Board: 

FRANK  S.  MACGREGOR 

President  and  Treasurer: 

RAYMOND  C.  HARWOOD 

l'i'  'its: 

EDW  \Kli   J.  TYLER,   JR., 

EUGEN1    1  \\l  \N.  ORDW  Vi    I  I    \l>. 

DANIEL  1\  BRADI  1  x 

Assistant  to  the  Publishei 
and  Circulation  Director: 

JOHN  JAY  HUGHES 


EDITORIAL     s I \ 1    I 

Editor  in  Chief:    john  fischer 

Managing  Editor:  russell  lynes 
Editors: 

KA1H1  KIM     (.At  ss     JACKSON 

ERIC  LARRABEE 

CATHARINE  MEYER 

ANNE  G.  FREEDGOOD 

Editorial  Secretary:    rose  daly 
Editorial  Assistant: 

LUCY  DONALDSON 


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FEBRUARY      1958 


vol.  216,  no.    1293 


ARTICLES 

25     \Vii\i   Is    Advertising  Good  For?  Martin  Mayer 
Drawings  by  Roy  Mi  Kie 

32     Our  Di  \ir.  Coi  i  i  vgi  is.  Arthur  C.  Clarke 
Drawings  by  Roy  McKie 

34     A  Chanci    ro  Withdraw  Oik   Troops  in  Europe, 
George  F.  Kennarj 

42     \\ii\i    I  w 1 1  Lawyers    \ki    Doing  to  Hollywood, 
Mm  i  ,i\     I  eigh  Bloom 
Cartoon  by  Chon  Day 

1!)     How    ro  Choosi    \  College,  Ii     \\\.   fohn  W.  Gardner 

60     Antibiotics:   Too  Much  of  a  Good  Thing? 

Vernon  Knight,  M.  I). 

()1      I  in    HilLbillies  [nvadi   Chk  \(.o,  Albert  \.  Votaw 
Drawings  by  Charles  II.  Walkei 

72     The  Voyage  of  mi   Lucky  Dragon,  Part-  III, 
Ralph  E.  Lapp 
Drawings  by  Ben  Shahn 

FICTION 

55     An  Old  Boy  Who  Made  Violins,  Ben  Maddow 
Drawings  by  Janina  Domanska 

VERSE 

54     And  1  Say  the  Hell  with  It,  Philene  Hammer 

68     Florence:  At  the  Villa  Jernyngham,  Osbert  Sitwell 
Drawings  by  Robert  Benton 

departments 

4     Letters 

10     The  Editor's  Easy  Chair— Who's  in  Charge  Here? 
fohn  Fischer 

20     Personal  &  Otherwise:  Among  Our  Contributors 

80     After  Hours,  Mr.  Harper 

83     The  New  Books,  Paul  Pickrel 

89     Books  in  Brief,  [Catherine  Gauss  Jackson 

92     The  New  Recordings,  Edward  Tatnall  Canby 

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LETTERS 


Poner  on  the  Border 

To  the  Editors: 

I  found  the  article  by  Senator  Neu 
berger,  "Powei  Struggle  <>n  the  Cana- 
dian  Border"  [December],  ver)  interest- 
ing. ...  I  he  problem,  as  he  points  out, 
is  crying  for  solution,  ami  unless  we  find 
ways  "I  resolving  differences  and  har- 
nessing those  available  kilowatts  ol  elec- 
trical  energy,  critical  power  shortages 
will    mount. 

Warren  G.  Magnuson,  Chairman 

Committee  on  interstate  and 

Foreign  Commerce 

U.  S.  Senate.  Washington 

Senator  Neuberger  brings  lo  light  sig- 
nificant and  timely  news  on  the  hydro 
power  situation  in  the  Northwest. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  region 
should  be  so  heavily  dependent  on  this 
power  source,  as  it  represents  less  than 
5  per  cent  of  the  nation's  energy.  With 
the  nation  now  engaged  on  new  lines  of 
public  works,  i.e.  highways,  and  ab- 
sorbed with  day-to-day  news  of  atomic 
developments,  it  seems  unlikely  that  for 
the  near  term  the  Congress  will  see  fit  to 
appropriate  the  tremendous  sums  of 
money  necessary  for  the  continued  ex- 
pansion  of   hydro  projects. 

Right  or  wrong,  the  bitter  public  vs. 
private  power  battle  has  divided  the 
area  politically,  with  unfortunate  re- 
sults. Donald  Wylie 
Highland  Park,  111. 

Vermont,  Pro  and  Con 

To  the  Editors: 

I  am  not  a  native  of  Vermont,  but  I 
have  spent  much  time  there  and  1  have, 
like  thousands  of  others,  a  high  regard 
for  that  state,  its  people,  and  their 
manner  of  life,  f  think  most  of  those 
at  all  acquainted  with  Vermont  will 
feel  as  I  do  about  [Mrs.  Chapin's]  cur- 
rent article  ["Vermont:  Where  Are  All 
Those  Yankees?"  December]:  that  it  is 
beneath  contempt  and  entirely  unworthy 
of  publication. 

Marc  T.  Gri  i  nj 
Thomaston,  Me. 

That  I  was  happih  able  to  purchase 
a    copy   of    the   December    Harper's   in 


Montpelier,  Vermont,  and  so  read  Mis. 
Chapin's   notes   on   Vermont   character, 

was    no    doubt    due    to    those    \  ci  %     tnflu- 

-   sin    so   loudl)    deplores. 

I  1 1/  \iu  in  Ken  i  (■  \\ 
Calais,  Vt. 

I  he  ai  ti<  le  by  Miriam  Chapin  is  a 
wonderful  picture  of  what  a  non-Ver- 
monter  expects  as  seen  through  th<  eyes 
ol  ,i  Vermonter.  However,  it  doesn't 
quite  tell  the  story.  The  pervading  Ver- 
mont isms  ol  the  natives,  ol  whom  1  am 
proud  to  be  one,  are  a  little  too  subtle 
to  make  a  good  article.  They  are  to  be 
found,  lot  instance,  in  the  attitude 
toward  Calvin  Coolidge  which,  among 
his  neighbors]  was  based  on  their  esti- 
mate of  him— man  and  boy— instead  of 
on  his  being  President.  They  are  to  be 
found  in  the  case  ol  a  very  acceptable 
preacher  from  the  Midwest  we  had  in 
our  town  once  who  made  the  alarming 
discovery  that  the  fad  ol  his  being  a 
clergyman  gave  him  no  automatic  dis- 
tin<  lion.    He  had  to  earn  it. 

I  might  say  just  a  word  or  two  about 
some  of  the  useful  characteristics  (un- 
people possess.  They  are  adaptable 
mechanically,  and  this  accounts  not 
merely  for  industrial  success  from  the 
days  of  Thaddeus  Fairbanks  and  the 
platform  scale  to  the  machine-tool  indus- 
try ol  Springfield  and  Windsor.  It  also 
accounts  for  the  successful  establishment 
in  Vermont  of  branch  plants  of  many 
national   organizations.    .    .    . 

The  second  characteristic,  and  this 
shows  character,  is  that  labor  relations 
are  based  on  the  assumption  that  man- 
agement and  labor  will  live  and  work  to- 
gether. Strikes  are  not  unknown.  Pro- 
tracted strikes  leading  to  lasting  bitter- 
ness   are    non-existent. 

As  to  telephone  numbers,  that  inci- 
dent shows  universal  characteristics  and 
might  have  occurred  in  France  or  Aus- 
tralia. However,  after  all,  there  is 
something  Vermontish  in  the  humor  and 
ingenuity.  Ralph  E.  Flanders 

U.S.  Senate,  Vermont 

Divide  and  Rue  It 

To  the  Editors: 

Charlton  Ogburn,  |r.  presents  a 
strong  case  lor  eliminating  military 
rivalry  in  the  Middle  East  between  Rus- 
sia and  the  West  ["Divide  and  Rue  It 
in  the  Middle  East,"  December].  Never- 
theless I  fail  to  find  it  entirely  convinc- 
ing. The  Russian  offer  of  "peaceful 
co-existence"    .    .    .    carries   strong   over- 


tones of  propaganda  to  me.  .  .  .  Soviet 
Russia  has  no  desire  to  have  the 
Middle  last  quiet  down  even  thougjg 
it  seeks  lo  prevent  a  major  conflict 
from  breaking  out  there.  It  l.uher 
aims  ai  stimulating  Arab  hatred  of 
[srael  in  ordei  to  be  a  beneficiary  of  I 
this  absorbing  passion  ol  the  Arabs. 
.  1  he  Soviet  realizes  lull  well  that  its 
phon\  offei  will  nevei  be  accepted  by 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain 
loi   the  following  reasons: 

(1)  American  aims  must  continue  to 
be  supplied  lo  Turkey  not  only  because 
ol  ils  ke\  position  .  .  .  but  because  it 
protects   ,\  \  1  ( )  s  Hank. 

(2)  The  adjoining  "northern  tier" 
countries,  Iraq  and  Iran,  must  continue 
to  receive  American  military  support 
or  succumb  lo  the  blackmail  threats 
ol    their    Soviet    neighbor. 

(3)  Jordan  would  collapse  without 
American  military  and  economic  aid. 
This  might  well  result  in  an  almost 
simultaneous  attempt  to  carve  up  the 
kingdom  by  Syria,  Iraq,  and  Israel 
with  that  part  of  the  Middle  East  be- 
coming a  center  ol  military  turmoil 
and  witli  an  accompanying  disruption 
ol  vital  oil  supplies  to  Western 
Europe.   .  .  . 

(4)  British  military  support  for  the 
Persian  Gulf  sheikdoms  must  be  main- 
tained because  ol  the  highly  strategic 
value    of   their   fabulous   oil   reserves. 

(5)  It  is  politically  unthinkable  for 
either  American  political  party  to  ac- 
cept a  policy  of  refusing  military  aid 
to  Israel  in  case  of  need. 

Let's  give  the  Soviet  credit  for  mak- 
ing what  some  may  consider  a  clever 
cold-war  propaganda  move.  However, 
it  is  of  no  help  in  solving  the  prob- 
lems. Ernest  T.  Clough 
Milwaukee,    Wise. 

Rites  of  Autumn 

To  the  Editors: 

Since  you  invite  addenda  and  alter- 
native suggestions  to  Mr.  Ferril's  ex- 
cellent (but  misguided)  try  at  inter- 
pretation of  the  Rites  of  Autumn  [The 
Editor's  Easy  Chair,  December],  I  hasten 
to    submit    the    following: 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  my  comment 
will  destroy  the  whole  edifice  built, 
obviously  at  the  cost  of  tremendous 
research,  by  Mr.  Ferril.  He  laid,  how- 
ever, the  egg  ol  his  own  downfall  in 
this  sentence:  "The  actual  rites,  per- 
formed by  twenty-two  young  priests  of 
perfect  physique.  .  .  ."  This  is  ex- 
tremely inaccurate.  My  own  research 
lias  shown  me  that  the  words  "perfect 
physique"  are  the  base  reason  for  the 
rites— in  reverse.  The  young  American 
male  from  birth  is  led  to  believe  that 
only  those  of  perfect  phvsique  can 
become   the   Blessed.   ...   By   the   time 


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Q  MASS  CULTURE.  Ed.  by  Bosenberg 
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D  SELECTED  WRITINGS  OF  JUAN 
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D  BATTLE  FOR  THE  MIND.  By  Dr. 
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LETTERS 

the  seekei  after  Blessedness  has  entered 
his  urns,  he  is  desperatel)  realizing  that 
lii-.  quest  has  bogged  down  in  the 
disastei  ol  knobb)  knees,  hollow  chest, 
li. ii  feet,  spindl)  neck.  \t  this  time 
ol  desperation  he  meets  the  Glorious 
but  False  Prophet  a  man  who  walks 
like  .i  god,  carrying  on  his  arm  strange 
apparel,  who  says  temptingly .  "  Try  it 
on."  I  In-  seekei  does  so  and  finds  that 
Ins  nil  Blessed  stale  is  hidden  l>\  pads, 
guards,  varied  protection  ol  every  de- 
scription for  ever)  pan  of  his  bated 
body, 

1  need  not  belabor  the  point.  From 
then  on  the  priesthood  must  perpetuate 
the      cover-up.       Ergo— the      Rites      ol 

AlltlUlUl.  KATHLEEN   SPROUL 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Sinister  Halo 

To  the   Editors: 

I  sincerely  hope  that  James  Robbins 
Miller's  excellent  article  ["Glaucoma: 
the  Sinister  Halo,"  December]  will  help 
to  save  man)  from  the  dangei  of 
blindness. 

Whoever  heard  once  the  frightening 
sound  ol  an  ophthalmologist's  diagnosis, 
"complete  atrophy,"  as  1  did  in  the 
case  ol  my  mother,  will  wonder,  as  I 
have  evei  since,  what  could  be  done 
to  save  as  many  as  possible  from  this 
treacherous  disease  which  so  often  strikes 
with  almost  no  warning. 

Making  the  pressure  test  part  of 
ever)  routine  medical  examination  of 
people  over  forty  would,  in  all  prob- 
ability, spare  many  from  such  suffering. 
Lottie  Joseph 
San  Francisco,  Calif. 

The  Dulleseum 

To  the  Editors: 

In  the  State  Department  circles  of 
Berlin,  the  American  Kongress  Halle 
ma)  be  called  the  "Dulleseum"  [The 
Editor's  Easy  Chair,  December],  but 
among  the  man-in-the-street  type  of 
Berliner  (who  is  so  renowned  for  his 
quick  answers  that  the  word  "Berliner- 
Schnauze"  means  man-of-quick-retort) 
this  building  is  called  "the  pregnant 
oyster,"  which  is  indeed  quite  apt. 

Otto   B.    Kiehl 

Captain,    PAA 

Berlin,  Germany 

Civil  Defense 

To  the   Editors: 

The  membership  of  the  Southern 
California  Civil  Defense  &  Disaster  As- 
sociation is  comprised  of  the  officials  of 
eight  counties,  more  than  eighty  cities, 


BOTH 


WALTER  J.  BLACK,  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  CLUB,  INVITES  YOU  TO  ACCEPT  FREE 


THS  ILIAD  OF  HOM*P» 

AND 

TH*  ODYSSEY  OF  HOMtR 


Two    Beautifully    Bound    Volumes.    In    the    Famous 
Translation   for   Modern   Readers   by  Samuel  Butler 

f\F  all  the  magic  of  "the  glory  that  was  Greece" 
^-^  these  two  books  cast  over  you  the  most  irre- 
sistible spell!  Alexander  the  Great  treasured  The 
Iliad  so  deeply  that  he  carried  it  into  battle  with 
him  in  a  jeweled  casket.  And  The  Odyssey  is  so 
teeming  with  unforgettable  action  and  adventure 
that  the  very  names  of  its  fascinating  characters 
are  ingrained  in  our  culture  today! 

Here,  in  these  books,  is  the  Greece  of  the  gods 
—  the  whole  gorgeous  panorama  of  mighty 
deeds,  of  alluring  women  and  warrior  heroes,  of 
tales  that  have  thrilled  millions  of  readers. 

No  wonder  these  two  immortal  books  of 
Homer,  "the  blind  bard,"  have  thundered  down 
through  thirty  centuries,  as  fresh  as  though  they 
had  been  written  only  yesterday!  And  now  —  as 
a  gift  from  the  Classics  Club,  for  your  library  of 
volumes  you  will  cherish  forever  —  you  may  have 
them  both  FREE! 


Why  The  Classics  Club  Offers  These  Two  Books  Free 


W  ILL  you  add  these  two  lovely  volumes  to 
"  your  library— as  a  membership  gift  from 
The  Classics  Club?  You  are  invited  to  join  today 
.  .  .  and  to  receive  on  approval  beautiful  editions 
of  the  world's  greatest  masterpieces. 

These  books,  selected  unanimously  by  distin- 
guished literary  authorities,  were  chosen  because 
they  offer  the  greatest  enjoyment  and  value  to 
the  "pressed  for  time"  men  and  women  of  today. 

Why    Are    Great   BooJcs   Called    "Classics"? 

A  true  "classic"  is  a  living  book  that  will  never 
grow  old.  For  sheer  fascination  it  can  rival  the 
most  thrilling  modern  novel.  Have  you  ever 
wondered  how  the  truly  great  books  have  become 
"classics"?  First  because  they  are  so  readable. 
They  would  not  have  lived  unless  they  were  read; 
they  would  not  have  been  read  unless  they  were 
interesting.  To  be  interesting  they  had  to  be 
easy  to  understand.  And  those  are  the  very  quali- 
ties which  characterize  these  selections;  read- 
ability, interest,  simplicity. 

Only   Boofc    Club   of   Its  Kind 

The  Classics  Club  is  different  from  all  other 
book  clubs.    1.   It  distributes  to  its   members  the 


world's  classics  at  a  low  price.  2.  Its  members 
are  not  obligated  to  take  any  specific  number  of 
books.  3.  Its  volumes  are  luxurious  De  Luxe 
Editions — bound  in  the  fine  buckram  ordinarily 
used  for  S5  and  S10  bindings.  They  have  tinted 
page  tops,  are  richly  stamped  in  genuine  gold, 
which  will  retain  its  original  lustre — books  you 
and  your  children  will  read  and  cherish  for 
many  years. 

A   Trial   Membership    Invitation   to    You 

You  are  invited  to  accept  a  Trial  Membership. 
With  your  first  book  will  be  sent  an  advance  no- 
tice about  future  selections.  You  may  reject  any 
book  you  do  not  wish.  You  need  not  take  any 
specific  number  of  books — only  the  ones  you 
want.  No  money  in  advance,  no  membership 
fees.  You  may  cancel  membership  any  time. 


We  suggest  that  you  mail  this  Invitation  Form 
to  us  at  once.  Paper,  printing,  binding  costs  are 
rising,  and  this  low  price— as  well  as  your  two 
beautifully  bound  free  copies  of  THE  ILIAD  and 
THE  ODYSSEY  of  HOMER— cannot  be  assured 
unless  you  respond  promptly.  THE  CLASSICS 
CLUB,  Roslyn,  L.  I.,  New  York. 


CY 


Walter  J.  Black,  President 

THE  CLASSICS  CLUB 

Roslyn,  L.  I.,  New  York 

Please  enroll  me  as  a  Trial  Member  and  send 
me,  FREE,  the  beautiful  two  volume  DeLuxe 
Classics  Club  Edition  of  THE  IL'AD  and  THE 
ODYSSEY  of  HOMER,  together  with  the  cur- 
rent selection. 

I  am  not  obligated  to  take  any  specific  number 
of  books  and  1  am  to  receive  an  advance  descrip- 
tion of  future  selections.  Also  1  may  reject  any 
volume  before  or  after  I  receive  it,  and  I  may 
cancel  my  membership  whenever  I  wjsh. 

For  each  volume  I  decide  to  keep  I  will  send  you 
$2.89,  plus  a  few  cents  mailing  charges.  (Booty 
thipped  in  U.  S.  A.  only.) 


Mr. 
Mrs. 

Miss 


Please  print  plainly 


Address 

Zone  No. 
City (ifany).  . .  .State. 


are  you  a 


UNITARIAN 


without 
knowing  it? 


Do  you  believe  that  religious  truth 
cannot  be  contrary  to  truth  from 
any  other  source? 

Do  you  believe  man  is  copable  of 
self-improvement  and  is  not  con- 
demned by  the  doctrine  of  "origi- 
nal  sin"? 

Do  you  believe  that  striving  to  live 
a  wholesome  life  is  more  important 
than  accepting  religious  creeds? 
Do  you  believe  in  the  practical  op- 
plication  of  brotherhood  in  all  so- 
cial relations? 

Then  you  are 

professing 

Unitarian   beliefs. 


LETTERS 


r 


MAIL  THIS  COUPON  WITH  IOC  TO 
UNITARIAN  LAYMEN'S  LEAGUE 
Dept.  H4A,  25  Beaton  St.,  Boston  8,  Mass. 
Please  send  me  booklets  on  Unitarionism 
Name. 


Address- 


Visit 


A 
P 

Hi 


.FOR  A  NEW  VIEWPOINT 

Seeking  something  new  and 
exciting  in  travel?  Then  visit 
Japan!  You'll  enjoy  the  beauty 
of  the  country  . . .  fine  modern, 
comfortable  hotels;  excellent 
transportation;  wonderful 
food;  and  thrilling  bargains. 
Give  yourself  a  new  viewpoint 
.  .  .  see  your  Travel  Agent  and 
plan  a  memorable  vacation 
in  the  intriguing  Orient! 


JMM  TOU MIT jJlMIHWH 


lO  Rockefeller  Plaza,  New  York  20 
651   Market  Street,  San  Francisco  S 
<*8  Front  St.  W.,  Toronto 
109  Kaiulani  Ave.,  Honolulu  15 


and  many  associates  in  aircraft  industry, 
communications,  and  public  utilities 
h,  hi 

Oui  jut  imIu  tion  i  embi  a<  i  ovei  50  000 
square  miles  <>|  critit  al  target  ana.  and 
wi  an  responsible  l"i  practical  plan- 
ning and  procedures  w  1 1 i<  h  will  protect 
well  ovei   seven  million  people. 

We  have  made  stead)  progress  in  fac- 
ing and  correcting  past  Civil  Defense 
errors  or  misconceptions.  We  have  estab- 
lished uniform  procedures  and  strength- 
ened out  ini  in  area  through  improved 
co-ordination  <>l  existing  personnel  and 
equipment  resources.  In  short,  Civil  De- 
fcnse  in  Southern  California  does  not 
reflect  the  conditions  cited  in  the  No- 
vembei  issue  <>l  youi  magazine  ["  I  he 
Civil  Defense  Fiasco"]. 

I  he  article  plus  the  art  work  seem  i<> 
us  an  exaggerated,  undue,  one-sided 
combination  which  misrepresents  the 
basii  i  on<  <  pt,  improved  status,  and  fu- 
ture progress  ol   Civil   Defense.  .  .  . 

Hi  \  i  \\n\  \l    Wat  m>\.  Pres. 

Southern  California  Civil 

Defense  &  Disastei    ^sso. 

Burbank,   Calif. 

.  .  .  I  am   the  "research   engineei 

the      National       \eaikm\      ol      Si  nines" 

mentioned  by  Robert  Moms  in  "The 
Civil  Defense  Fiasco,"  and  as  mhIi  must 
admit  responsibility  foi  the  article  in 
/  it-  and  for  the  presentation  before  the 
Rockefellei  Brothers  Fund  Conference. 
.  .  .  It  is  ii  ur  that  I  am  a\]  employ ee  i >l 
the  National  Academy  ol  Sciences;  how- 
ever, both  contributions  were  made  as 
individual  efforts  ->\)d  were  clearly  iden- 
tified as  such.  I  In  National  Academy  ol 
Sciences  did  not  make  any  proposals, 
startling  oi  otherwise;  it  did  not  esti- 
mate the  cost  ol  an)  program;  it  docs 
not  review  oi  comment  on  the  private 
papei s  ol   iis  employees.  .  .  . 

At  the  request  oi  the  Rockefeller 
Brothers  Fund  I  prepared  an  original 
papei  which  contained  substantially  the 
same  material  as  that  published  in  Life. 
\i  \ i ( i ( •  1 1  House  before  a  small  but  very 
distinguished  group  oi  nationally  known 
men.  I  presented  it  and  debated  these 
[joints  with  Mr.  Moses.  He  used  many 
of  the  same  phrases  that  were  later 
printed  in  youi  article,  and  the  con- 
sensus of  opinion  ol  the  group  was  that 
he  was   beaten  on  every  point.  .  .  . 

In  the  discussion  ol  zoning  with  inten- 
tion to  clear  slums,  establish  fire-breaks, 
etc.— a  subject  in  which  Mr.  .Moses  is  an 
acknowledged  authority— there  is  the 
very  revealing  implication  that  these 
might  be  very  helpful  but  "we  don't 
think  there  is  a  chance  of  getting  any- 
thing substantial  done."  ...  It  is  a  fairly 
sale  bet  that  the  leading  city-planner 
of  Tokyo  used  similar  words  in  1940. . . . 

As  lor  the  shelter  suggestions,  I  have 
advocated  that  shelters  be  located  adja- 


cent to  homes,  or  as  part  of  them,  be- 
cause that  is  where  people  are  most  ol 
the  time.  .  .  .  One  spei  ini  fot  m  ol  home- 
sheltei    proposed    can    be    inexpensively 

mass-produced  I isiderablj  less  than 

"I'll  pel  cent  ol  the  cost"  ol  ,i  house.  In 
most    places   .\\\    excellent    laiinh    shelter 

(.in  be  developed  foi   nuclei  $200  a  per- 

so.n.      .      .      . 

It  will  not  take  long  to  decide  the 
issue.  Fortunately,  the  error  ol  not  hav- 
ing a  sheltei  is  a  mist. ike  that  people 
make  only  on<  e.  \\  u  t  vrd  B  w  om 

Washington,  1).  C. 


Anti  Billboard 

To  the  Editors: 

May  I  express  appreciation  ol  item 
six  in  the  Editor's  Eas)  Chair  Christmas 
list  in  the-  December  Harper's. 

I'm  just  back  from  a  visit  with  our 
daughtei  in  Hawaii  where  there  are  no 
billboards,  not  because  the\  are  lorbid- 
den  by  statute-,  but  because  they  are  not 
tolerated   by    public    opinion. 

Appreciative  mention  ol  Union  Oil 
Company's  abstaining  from  billboard 
advertising  should  help  materially  in 
creating  such  a  public  opinion  here. 

Karl  W.  Onthank 
Eugene,    Ore. 


Who  Can  Sing? 


lo   mi    Editors: 

Mis.  Ruedebush's  declaration  that 
"Youi  Child  Can  Sing"  [December] 
prompts  me  to  suggest  that  e\en  some 
ol  one's  adult  Iriencls  can  sing  in  some- 
thing other  than  a  monotone.  Her  con- 
clusion that  the  commonest  difficulty 
with  children  (and.  I  would  acid,  with 
adults)  is  inattentiveness  reminded  me 
ol  an  experience  I  once  had  in  a  rural 
graduate  summer  school  where  group 
singing  had  to  be  one  of  the  main  di- 
versions. 

A  fellow-student  .  .  .  contributed  the 
basest  note  to  what  otherwise  had  been 
a  concord  e)l  sweet  sounds.  I  discov- 
ered that  when  we  sang  pianissimo  he 
suddenly  and  cjuite  unconsciously  sang 
exactly  on  pitch.  But  when  we  sang 
louder  .  .  .  he  became  mote  pronounced 
in  his  monotone:  and  the  louder  we 
sang  to  drown  him  out  the  more  monot- 
onous he  got.  A  few  sessions  ol  sing- 
ing softly  with  him— warning  him  we 
both  must  stop  when  he  became  his  old 
unbearable  basso  self— may  no'  have 
cured  him.  but  they  at  least  made  him  a 
less  obnoxious  and  more  tuneful  singer. 
...  I  hope  that  he  is  still  singing  softly 
—and  accurately— as  we  both  learned  he 
could  do  by  the  simple  matter  of  paying 
attention.  I.   B.   Cauthen,  Jr.! 

Charlottesville,   Va. 


GIVEN  TO  YOU 


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if  Members  are  notilied  in  advance 
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the  price  is  $6.75.  (A  small  extra 
charge  is  added  to  cover  the  cost  "I 
handling  and   shipping.) 

if.  The  sole  obligation  of  members 
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Club  is  to  buy  four  recordings  a 
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jh-2 


the  metropolitan  opera  record  club 
a  branch  of  Book-op-the-Month  Club,  inc. 

345  Hudson  Slrcot,  Now  York  14,  N.  Y. 

Please  enroll  me  as  a  subscriber  to  The  Metropolitan 
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may  eancel  the  subscripts I   any  time  after  buying  the 

fourth  recording,  n  i  wish  to,  i  may  return  the  Introductory 
reeordlriK  within  la  dayH,  and  the  subscription  will  at  oneo 
be  canceled  with  no  further  obligation  on  my  port. 


MR. 

MRS. 

MIHH 


(PLEASE  HUNT  JM.A/NI.Y) 


A'I'Im      i 


City.. 


..Zone  No State. 


MOC  16 


i >rd  prlco«  nro  the  unrno  in  C i id  n„-  Club  «Mi.»  to 

Ciininllim   nn'inljrrii,    wlllmnl    liny   extra   CharffO    for  "(illy.    tltrOligll 

Book-or-tlio-Morali  Club  (Canada),  Ltd, 


JOHN   FISCHER 


the  editor9;. 


EASY  CHAIR 


Who's  in  Charge  Here? 

MOST  Americans  would  agree  that  no 
living  man  has  served  this  country  hetter 
than  Dwight  I).  Eisenhower.  His  whole  career 
has  been  devoted  to  the  public  service  in  a 
range  of  duties— soldier,  military  diplomat,  edu- 
cator, political  leader— which  has  no  parallel  in 
our  history.  He  led  the  greatesl  military  coali- 
tion of  all  lime;  he  founded  the  NATO  shield 
which  now  protects  the  Western  world;  he  recon- 
ciled the  nation  to  the  costly  and  bitter  neces- 
sity of  American  leadership  through  a  time  of 
troubles  with  no  foreseeable  end.  For  these 
services  all  of  us  owe  him  a  "latitude  beyond 
measure. 

There  is  now  one  last  great  service  which 
President  Eisenhower  can  perform  for  his  coun- 
try.   He  can  resign. 

In  so  doing,  he  would  also  serve  his  party— 
and  the  Free  World— far  better  than  he  could  by 
remaining  in  the  White  House. 

I  here  also  is  one  great  service  which  his 
friends,  his  official  family,  and  the  American  peo- 
ple—who owe  him  so  much— can  now  perform 
for  the  President.  They  can  do  their  best  to 
persuade  him  that  his  resignation  would  be  an 
act  of  wisdom,  courage,  and  patriotism.  That  it 
is.  in   fact,  his  highest  duty. 

In  all  likelihood  it  will  not  be  easy  for  Presi- 
dent Eisenhower  to  accept  this  fact.  The  instinct 
of  an  old  soldier  must  be  prompting  him  to  hang 
on,  to  stand  to  his  post  regardless  of  his  wounds. 
No  doubt  this  instinct  is  strengthened  by  the 
impulse  common  to  men  who  have  suffered  a 
sudden,  frightening  illness— the  impulse  to  prove 
that  thev  are  as  good  as  ever.  Perhaps  this  ex- 
plains his  eagerness  to  fly  to  the  NATO  confer- 
ence in  Paris  only  a  few  days  after  his  doctors 
had  announced  that  his  stroke  would  require  "a 
period  of  rest  and  substantially  reduced  activity, 
estimated  at  several  weeks." 

It  also  is  hard  for  any  man  who  sits  at  the 
President's  desk  to  believe  that  anyone  else  can 


safely  take  over  the  infinitely  heavy,  complex, 
and  urgent  tasks  which  he  alone  has  had  an  op- 
portunity to  master.  And  there  always  are  men 
around  every  chief  executive  who  arc'  eager  to 
.issnic  him  (sometimes  sincerely,  sometimes  for 
selfish  reasons)  that  he  has  indeed  become  indis- 
pensable. 

All  these  pressures  must  be  beating  on  the 
President  today,  as  thev  did  on  Wilson  during 
the  pitiful  months  alter  his  stroke  and  on  Frank- 
lin D.  Roosevelt  during  the  last  weeks  of  his  life. 
Both  of  those  cases  demonstrated  how  powerful 
such  pressures  can  be,  and  how  costly  to  the 
nation. 

Yel  at  the  same  time  President  Eisenhower's 
military  training,  if  nothing  else,  must  be  forc- 
ing him  to  question  these  instincts  and  urgings. 
He  can  hardly  forget  how  he  would  have  handled 
such  a  problem  if  it  had  involved  one  of  his 
subordinates  during  World  War  II. 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  General  Pattern  had 
been  stricken  with  three  grave  illnesses  during  the 
course  of  his  most  desperately  fought  campaign 
.  .  .  that  he  could  stay  in  the  field  only  about  40 
per  cent  of  the  time  .  .  .  that  crucial  decisions 
repeatedly  had  to  be  postponed  for  days  and 
weeks  .  .  .  that  he  was  threatened  at  every  mo- 
ment with  another  heart  attack,  another  in- 
testinal blockage,  another  stroke.  In  such  cir- 
cumstances, the  Supreme  Commander  could 
never  have  doubted  what  his  duty  was.  He 
would  have  replaced  him  instantly  with  a  well 
man. 

Military  regulations,  in  fact,  do  not  permit  an 
officer  in  President  Eisenhower's  condition  to 
remain  in  command  of  a  company  of  troops  or 
the  smallest  naval  vessel,  even  in  peacetime. 
But  we  are  not  at  peace,  and  President  Eisen- 
hower does  not  command  a  mere  destroyer.  We 
are  in  the  middle  of  the  fiercest  struggle  for  sur- 
vival in  our  history,  and  he  commands  the  Ship 
of  State  itself. 

Unfortunately  there  are  no  regulations,  or 
even  precedents,  to  help  him  make  his  decision. 
He  can  look  for  guidance  only  to  his  own  strong 
sense  of  public  responsibility,  the  counsel  of  his 
family  and  friends,  and  the  voice  of  the  public— 
as  expressed  in  Congress  and  the  press. 

SO  FAR  this  voice  has  been  curiously  muffled 
and  contradictory.  For  reasons  of  delicacy  or 
politics,  many  people  in  Washington  (including 
some  newspapermen)  are  reluctant  to  discuss  the 
issue  openly.  In  private  conversations,  however, 
they  sometimes  are  a  good  deal  more  candid. 
For  example,  a  number  of  Senators  and  other 
political  leaders  in  both  parties  have  told  me 
within  the  last  few  weeks  that  they  do  not  want 
the  President  to  resign,  but  that  it  would  be 
impolitic  for  them  to  explain  their  reasons 
publicly. 
A  few  of  these— some  Democrats,  some  Repub- 


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[EMMi'MDMa'DME^ 


12 


THE     EDITORS     EASY     CHAIR 


licans— are  thinking  in  almost  purely  partisan 
terms;  and  their  objections  (enter  on  Vice  Presi- 
dent Richard  M.  Nixon. 

I  he  Demo»  rats  in  this  group  (and  1  am  happy 
to  report  thai  I  did  not  End  main  <>l  them)  are 
content  to  see  the  Administration  drift  along  in 
its  present  state  ol  semi-paralysis,  rhe  longer  it 
drifts  the  more  sine  they  leel  of  victory,  both  in 
the  Congressional  elections  tins  I. ill  and  in  the 
I960  Presidential  election.  II  Nixon  should  take 
over,  the)  suspect  he  might  act  with  enough  de- 
cision and  vigoi  to  restore  public  confidence  in 
the  Republican  party;  and  he  certainly  would 
have  a  <  hance  to  build  a  record  and  public  image 
of  himsell  which  would  make  him  a  more  formi- 
dable opponent   in    1960. 

\  lew  ol  these  Democrats— all  Southerners  and 
all  in  Congress— cite  .n\  additional  reason.  They 
feel  that  the  powei  ol  the  White  House  has  been 
growing,  at  the  expense  ol  Congress,  for  the  last 
quarter  ol  a  century.  Now,  with  the  executive 
branch  weak  and  glowing  weaker,  they  see  a 
chance  to  restore  much  of  this  lost  authority  to 
Capitol  Hill.  Moreover,  a  feeble  executive  can- 
not push  ahead  with  certain  lines  of  action— 
particularly  in  the  fields  of  civil  rights  and  race 
relations  which  these-  Southerners  mortally  op- 
pose. (The  faults  and  dangers  ol  Congressional 
government,  which  Woodrow  Wilson  set  forth  so 
clearly  in  his  great  treatise  on  the  subject,  don't 
woiia  them  in  the  least;  the\  want  a  dominant 
Congress,  because  Congress  is  largely  controlled 
l>\  Southerners;  and  when  the  interests  of  the 
South— the  white  South,  that  is— are  at  stake,  the 
nation  and  the  Free  World  run  second  and 
third.  They  are,  ol  course,  a  minority  of  the 
Southerners  in  Congress;  the  majorit)  are  as 
patriotic    and   responsible  as  anyone.) 

Some  Democrats  of  a  different  stripe,  mostly 
Northern  liberals,  cannot  forgive  Nixon's  tactics 
in  past  campaigns,  particularly  his  insinuation 
that  theirs  was  a  party  of  treason:  and  this  per- 
sonal  dislike  overrides  all   other  considerations. 

A  related  view  is  held  by  some  Republicans, 
mostly  Know  land  supporters.  They  don't  like 
Nixon;  don't  want  him  in  the  White  House  now 
or  ever;  and  oppose  any  move  that  might 
strengthen  his  hand. 

Probably  a  larger  group  in  both  parties  would 
like  to  see  the  President  stav  on  for  an  entirely 
different  reason.  One  of  the  ablest  Republican 
Senators  explained  it  to  me  in  these  terms: 

"No  matter  how  incapacitated  Ike  may  be,  he 
still  has  one  thing  nobody  else  has— and  that  is 
the  one  thing  we  can't  do  without.  He  is  the  only 
man  in  the  world  who  can  rally  both  this  country 
and  our  European  allies  in  a  moment  of  crisis. 
Nixon  is  almost  unknown  abroad,  and  he  arouses 
a  lot  of  partisan  feeling  at  home.  Adenauer  is 
old  and  sick,  too;  Macmillan  doesn't  seem  to 
have  a  majority  of  his  own  people  behind  him; 
Fiance  has  nobody.    Without  Eisenhower's  lead- 


ership—faltering as  it  is— the  whole  alliance 
might  fall  apart.  Even  toda\  he  can  blow  that 
bugle  like   nobody  else.'' 

This  argument  clearly  deserves  respect  (as 
some  ol  the  others  do  nor).  Hut  it  is  an  argu- 
ment that  gets  weakei  da\  l>\  day;  loi  Mr.  Eisen- 
hower's prestige  is  a  wasting  asset.  No  doubt  he 
will  remain  a  beloved  figure— but  his  ability  to 
i. ill\  the  coalition 'inevitably  will  dwindle,  as  his 
Administration  sinks  deeper  into  confusion  and 
impotence.    Only  the  strong  can   lead. 

BUT  isn't  it  possible  that  the  Administra- 
tion might  regain  at  least  some  of  its  author- 
ity  and  ch  ive? 

I  cannot  see  how.  Nobody  1  have  talked  to  in 
either  party  expresses  an)  confidence  on  tins 
score:  and  the  more  carefully  one  examines  the 
situation,  the  harder  it  is  to  find  any  grounds 
lot  confidence. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  no  prospect  whatever 
that  President  Eisenhower  can  recover  the  vigor 
to  run  the  government  himself.  Age  alone— aside 
from  his  illnesses— makes  that  inconceivable.  At 
sixty-seven  he  alreadv  is  beyond  the  compulsory 
retirement  age  ol  most  corporations;  in  another 
\cai  he  will  be  the  oldest  man  who  ever  held  the 
Presidency.  Even  before  his  heart  attack,  he 
found  it  necessary  to  spend  more  time  away  from 
his  desk  than  any  modern  President;  now,  after 
a  third  grave  illness,  he  has  no  alternative  but 
to  seek  the  maximum  of  rest,  the  minimum  of 
strain.  At  best  he  can  continue  to  sign  the  papers 
placed  before  him,  to  preside  at,  an  occasional 
meeting,  to  receive  distinguished  visitors,  and 
to  express  an  opinion  on  issues  presented  by  his 
stall. 

Hut  this  is  a  vcr\  small  part  ol  the  work  of  the 
Presidency.  All  the  rest  of  it  must  be  handled— 
so  long  as  he  remains  the  nominal  chief— by  some 
kind  of  makeshift  device.  Only  two  such  devices 
seem  to  be  feasible. 

One  of  them  is  Government  by  Committee. 
This  is  the  system  now  in  effect,  as  James  Reston 
of  the  New  York  Times  Washington  staff 
pointed  out  in  his  recent  noteworthy  series  of 
articles  on  the  Presidency.  The  membership  of 
the  governing  council  varies  from  time  to  time, 
but  in  general  it  consists  of  the  Vice  President; 
Sherman  Adams,  Assistant  to  the  President  and 
in  effect  his  chief  of  staff:  the  Cabinet  officers; 
the  heads  of  certain  independent  agencies,  such 
as  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission;  and  a  few 
top  military  men. 

When  he  is  able,  the  President  sits  in  on  the 
deliberations  of  his  councilors,  in  whatever 
grouping  may  be  appropriate  for  the  task  in 
hand— a  Cabinet  meeting,  a  formal  session  of 
the  NSC,  or  an  informal  chat  with  Nixon, 
Adams,  and  the  agency  chiefs  concerned  with  a 
particular  problem.  But  his  personal  participa- 
tion cannot  be  very  great.    Some  agency  heads 


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How  to  protect  the  family  income 
7  ways 

i  When    it    pays    to    pre-pay    your 
I     mortgage 

'  How  to  clinch  a  pay  raise 

1  What  it  takes  to  go  in  business 
for  yourself 

How  to   figure   your   financial 
I     worth— draw  up  a  working  plan 

[Overlooked  ways  of  cutting  your 
income  tax 

How  to  show  a  family  "profit" 

[How  to  finance  a   car  at  lowest 
rates 

Eosy  way  to  Veep  family  expenses 
down 

I  What   a    young    man    should    do 
with  his  money  — 4  plans 

'Suggested  spending  plans  for 
I    three  income  levels 

How  to  size  up  cost  of  owning  a 


ranch,    two-story,    or    split-level 
house 

Investment  plans  for  average 
earners 

Yardsticks  of  family  spending  for 
clothes,  health,  recreation,  etc. 

Techniques  of  job  getting,  job 
holding  success 

7  ways  to  achieve  an  ideal  in- 
surance program 

Part-time  jobs  for  women— check 
list  of  9  wide-open  fields 

What  executives  want  most  in  a 
secretary 

30  "safe"  common  stocks  for 
investment 

10  ways  to  get  set  now  for  happy 
retirement 

How  to  spot  a  bargain  from  a 
"packed  price" 

How  to  save  $1,149  in  interest  on 
a  mortgage 


TEST  YOURSELF 


See  how  much  you  know — about 
the  following  statements  TRUE  or 
below  —  but  don't  peek  now. 

1.  You  can't  deduct  from  your 
income  tax  the  market  value 
of  cast-off  clothing  given  to 
the  Salvation  Army. 

2.  On  $600  a  month  Income 
you  can  safely  spend  $92  on 
mortgage  payments. 

3.  Buying  stocks  is  one  of  the 
best  ways  to  make  sure  your 
dollars  today  are  worth  as 
much  in  25  years. 

4.  Term  insurance  gives  a  grow* 
Ing  family  all  the  protection 
It  needs. 

5.  Part-time  work  does  not 
qualify  a  person  for  social 
security. 

Answers: 


your  money,  job,  and  living.  Are 
FALSE?  Correct  answers  shown 


6.  A  typical  middle-income 
family  of  4  should  expect  to 
pay  $30  to  $35  a  week  for 
food. 

7.  Figures  show  that  70%  of 
workers  over  45  perform  as 
well  or  better  than  younger 
workers. 

8.  It  always  costs  less  to  finance 
a  new  car  through  a  dealer. 

9.  Investing  a  fixed  sum  at 
regular  intervals  is  the  best 
way  to  buy  stocks. 

10.  The  biggest  retail  lines  In 
1980  will  be  appliances  and 
recreational  equipment. 


1. 

False 

2. 

True 

3. 

True 

4. 

False 

s. 

False 

6. 

True 

7. 

True 

S. 

False 

9. 

True 

10. 

True 

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14 


In  times 
like  these . . . 


Should  you  buy? 

Should  you  sell  ? 

We  can't  give  you  categorical  an- 
swers to  those  questions,  of  course, 
because  individual  circumstances  will 
always  dictate  the  best  course  for  any 
security  owner. 

But  we  do  want  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  our  basic  philosophy  of  in- 
vesting remains  unchanged.  We  can 
sum  it  up  in  two  statements — 

(1)  We  believe  that  now  is  as  good 
a  time  as  any  to  invest  in  Amer- 
ican business  through  owner- 
ship of  carefully  selected  stocks 
or  bonds  /'/  you  have  extra 
money  after  providing  for  liv- 
ing expenses,  adequate  insur- 
ance, and  an  emergency  fund. 

(2)  We  believe  that  any  portfolio 
should  be  reviewed  periodically 
— in  any  kind  of  market — to 
see  if  it  can  be  improved  by 
exchanging  one  stock  for  an- 
other, shifting  into  bonds  or 
preferred  stocks — or,  reversing 
this  procedure  when  times  seem 
opportune. 

If  you  have  any  doubts  about  your 
proper  course  of  action  in  the  present 
situation,  we  hope  you'll  feel  free  to 
submit  your  problem  to  our  Research 
Department. 

Our  portfolio  analysts  will  be  happy 
to  suggest  the  most  suitable  moves 
they  can,  and  you  won't  be  charged  a 
cent  for  their  detailed  analysis  of  your 
current  position.  No,  you  won't  incur 
any  obligation,  either. 

If  you  think  such  an  analysis  might 
prove  helpful,  simply  write  to  — 

Allan  D.   Gulliver,  Department  SW-ll 

Merrill  Lynch, 
Pierce,  Fenner  &  Beane 

Members  New  York  Stock  Exchange 
and  all  other  Principal  Exchanges 

70  Pine  Street,  New  York  5,  N.  Y. 

Offices  in  112  Cities 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


have    nol     seen     him     Eoi     months. 

Mosl  questions  (1  am  told)  come 
to  him  in  the  Eorm  of  short  memo- 
randa laid  on  his  desk  In  Slid  in. in 
Adams.  Normally  these  are  recom- 
mendations lot  .k  lion  in  |)oli(  \,  with 
.i  terse  outline  of  background  infor- 
mation. The  President  merely  has  to 
indicate  "Yes"  or  "No"— and  in  the 
great  majority  of  cases  he  says  "Yes" 
to  the  recommendations  drafted  by 
the  White  House  staff. 

Within  its  limitations,  this  system 
seems  to  work  fairly  efficiently.  Cer- 
tainly it  relieves  Mr.  Eisenhower  of 
a  great  load  of  administrative  re- 
sponsibility; and  it  keeps  the  routine 
wheels  of  government  turning 
in  theii  accustomed  ruts.  Rut  its  limi- 
tations are  very  serious  indeed. 

For  one  thing,  it  is  not  designed  to 
handle  the  biggest  and  hardest  prob- 
lems. Many  of  these  never  reach  the 
President,  and  therefore  are  never 
settled  at  all.  Mr.  Eisenhower  has 
always  disliked  controversy,  and 
even  before  his  illness  he  insisted 
that  the  recommendations  brought 
to  him  should,  whenever  possible, 
present  a  solution  agreed  upon  by 
everyone  concerned.  Today  it  is 
more  important  than  ever  that  he 
should  not  be  subjected  to  the  strain 
—mental,  physical,  and  emotional— 
of  weighing  the  arguments  lor  two 
or  three  possible  solutions,  and  listen- 
ing to  the  pleas  of  passionate  advo- 
cates on  ea<  h  side. 

But  the  really  tough  problems  can- 
not be  reduced  to  a  single  recommen- 
dation, agreeable  to  everybody.  They 
involve  deep  conflicts  of  interest  or 
conviction— usually  so  deep  they  can- 
not be  compromised.  They  can  be 
settled  only  by  knocking  heads  to- 
gether, making  an  unpleasant  choice 
between  the  contenders,  or  some- 
times only  by  firing  a  Cabinet  officer 
or  agency  chief.  These  are  things 
that  even  Sherman  Adams  cannot  do 
(particularly  when  a  strong  Congres- 
sional bloc  is  enlisted  on  one  side  or 
both).  In  such  cases  the  elaborate 
machinery  of  the  White  House  staff 
—including  the  Budget  Bureau,  the 
National  Security  Council,  and  the 
Council  of  Economic  Advisers— is  no 
help,  however  effective  it  may  be  in 
ironing  out  the  smaller  problems. 

Consequently,  issues  of  this  kind 
are  often  laid  aside,  or  debated  end- 
lessly within  the  departments  and 
staff  agencies  in  a  hopeless  effort  to 


reach  an  agreement— because,  m 
vdams  so  often  sa\s.  "We  niusl 
bother  the  President  with  the! 
squabbles."  I  his  seems  to  be  I 
main  reason,  for  example,  why  I 
armed  scnices  have  never  been  al 
to  come  up  with  a  single,  coma 
hensive  strategic  doctrine  lor  ■ 
cold  war  .  .  .  why  the  missile  p.. 
gram  is  in  such  a  mess  .  .  .  and  \\y 
the  fundamental  differences  bctwu 
Nixon  and  Dulles  on  certain  fore* 
polity  questions  have  never  bu 
resolved. 

ANOTHER  grave  limitatij 
of  the  committee  system  is  trl 
it  cannot  create  a  new  progna 
which  sweeps  across  many  depali 
mental  lines.  No  bureaucrat  ci 
safeh  push  forward  an  idea  whi.i 
reaches  beyond  his  own  little  bac- 
yard;  all  the  other  bureaucrats  1 
stantly  resent  his  encroachment  J 
their  territories,  and  gang  up  I 
knock  his  head  off.  As  a  result,  J 
the  big  questions  involving  mai 
agen<  ies— disarmament,  for  instant 
or  foreign  economic  policy— the  gd 
ernment  inevitably  tends  to  folic! 
directives  laid  down  by  Preside* 
Eisenhower  during  his  early  niont 
in  office. 

This  is  why  so  many  of  the  Admi  I 
istiation's  policies  have  grown  stal 
and  rigid.  Although  conditions  1 
the  otiiei  world  change  constant! 
noboch  in  the  lower  levels  of  gofj 
ernment  dares  to  take  the  initiative 
in  devising  fresh,  bold,  imaginathl 
ideas  to  meet  these  changes;  and  rl 
could  not  carry  them  very  far  if  hi 
did.  Here,  as  Cabell  Phillips  m 
cently  observed,  nothing  can  "sulv 
stitute  for  the  authority  or  prestigj 
or  personal  vitality  of  the  Preside™ 
Committees  cannot  rule;  about  th 
best  they  can  do  is  to  reach  the  lov 
est  common  denominator  of  consen 
Tough  policy  decisions  that  may  cal! 
for  sacrifice  and  danger  aren't  mad 
that  way." 

Finally,  a  committee  cannot  figh 
all  the  Administration's  program 
through  Congress.  This  is  perhap 
the  hardest  and  most  vital  of  all  th< 
President's  jobs;  and  only  he  cai 
handle  it.  Nobody  else  can  tall 
tough  to  a  balky  Senator.  Nobod; 
else  can  mobilize  public  opinion,  oi 
wield  the  combination  of  persuasion 
political  discipline,  appeals  to  per 
sonal    loyalty,    patronage    pressure 


WM::::;^Wf:iP+:' 


In  cities  where 

stamp  use  is  greatest 

food  prices  have 

risen  the  least 


In  these  inflationary  times,  the  finger  of  biame  for  rising  food 

prices  is  being  pointed  in  many  directions.  It  should  be  interesting  to  American 
consumers  to  know  that  the  trading  stamp  is  not  a  contributing  factor. 


This  fact  has  been  shown  in  two  ways  by  the 
studies  of  marketing  experts  in  universities. 
First,  these  studies  found  no  evidence  that 
stamp  stores,  as  a  class,  charge  higher  prices 
than  non-stamp  stores.  Second,  from  a  com- 
parative use  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
Index,  they  found  that  food  prices  have  risen 
the  least  in  cities  where  stamps  are  given 
most. 

Between  December  1954  and  December 
1956,  when  food  prices  for  all  U.  S.  cities  rose 
1.8%,  the  same  prices  rose  2.8%  in  five  Index 
cities  where  supermarkets  did  not  give 
stamps. 

During  the  same  period,  in  ten  cities  where 
50%  or  more  of  both  chains  and  independent 
supermarkets  gave  stamps,  prices  rose  only 


1.3%.  And,  in  the  three  cities  where  stamp 
use  was  highest  (75%  of  all  supermarkets), 
food  prices  rose  only  1.2%. 

These  city  by  city  comparisons  are  addi- 
tional evidence  that  trading  stamps  exert 
competitive  pressure  to  help  keep  food  prices 
down.  It  seems  reasonable  to  assume  that, 
for  families  living  in  "stamp  cities,"  stamps 
have  helped  contribute  to  a  lower  cost  of 
living  in  food  purchases. 


EEFEEENCES:  "Competition  and  Trading  Stamps  in 
Retailing."  Dr.  Eugene  R.  Beem,  School  of  Business 
Administration,  University  of  California. 

"Trading  Stamp  Practice  and  Pricing  Policy."  Dr. 
Albert  Haring  and  Dr.  Wallace  O.  Yoder,  Marketing 
Department,  School  of  Business,  Indiana  University. 


This  page  is  one  of  a  series  presented  for  your  information  by 

THE  SPEKRY  AND  HUTCHINSON  COMPANY  which  pioneered  61  years  ago  in  the  movement 

to  give  trading  stamps  to  consumers  as  a  discount  for  paying  cash.  S&H  GREEN  STAMPS 

are  currently  being  saved  by  millions  of  consumers. 


16 


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THE     EASY     CHAIR 

and  awesome  authority  which  ai 
often  necessar)  to  swing  a  Congres 
sional  vote.  Roosevelt  and  Trumai 
spent  innumerable  hours  in  this  kim 
dl  exhausting  combat.  (On  the  rar 
occasions  when  they  tried  to  tick 
gate  Congressional  liaison— to 
Tommy  Corcoran,  a  Harry  Hopkins 
.i  John  Steelman— the  results  wer 
nearl)  always  disastrous.)  Even  wliei 
he  \N.ts  well  Mi .  I  isenhower  shran 
from  this  i.tsk,  and  now  ii  is  clear! 
beyond  his  strength.  It  is  not  sua 
prising,  therefore,  thai  so  many  o 
the  Administration's  proposals  ol  th 
last  fout  years  have  died  on  I  h 
Hill:  and  ii  is  a  virtual  ccrtaintx  tha:| 
few  ol  them  will  emerge  uncrippled 
from  the  present  session  ol  Congress 

SI  NCE   it   is  obvious  that   Go\| 
eminent    by    Committee    is    no 
working  well,  many  people  in  Wash] 
ington    have    been    quietl)    looking 
around  lor  an  alternative.  The)  liav 
hit   upon  only  one  device— short   a 
Mr.  Eisenhower's  retirement— whid 
seems  to  warranl  serious  discussioi 
I  his  is  Government  l>\   Deputy. 

The  deputy,  of  course,  would  b 
Mi.    Nixon.     The    idea    being    .it 
vanced  in  private  by  several  respoi 
sible  political  leaders  (including  th 
Republican   Senator  quoted  carlieii 
is  thai  the  President  should  formalll 
delegate  most  of  his  powers  to   th 
Vice     President.      Mr.     Eisenhowe 
would  remain  the  symbolic  chief  cl 
state:  he  could  still  issue  pronounce; 
ments  from  time  to  time  when  it  m 
necessary     to     "blow     that     bugle,  'j 
Meanwhile  the  executive  energy  anl 
initiative   which    now    are   so    sadll 
lacking  would   be   supplied  by   Mil 
Nixon— who  is  young,  healthy,   anj 
endowed  with  enough  drive  for  hall 
a-dozen  men. 

If  it  could  be  worked  out,  such  aijj 
arrangement  obviously   would   be 
vast   improvement  over  the  commii 
tee    svstem.     At    least    in    theory,    i 
should  cure  most  of  the  difficultie 
mentioned  above.    There  are  gravj 
doubts,    however,   whether   it   coultlj 
be    put    into   effect— or,    if   it    wen 
whether    the   new   machinery   coul<|| 
be  adjusted  to  work  smoothly  with] 
in  the  three  years  remaining  to  thij. 
Administration. 

To  begin  with,  Mr.  Eisenhowelj 
never  showed  any  willingness  to  dele 
gate  a  real  measure  of  authorid 
even  during  the  worst  crises  of  his  x  11  i 


A    COLLEGE    E  DUG  ATION 
DOES    NOT    MAKE    AN 


pi 

E..iyUUO|K  p'^-M  A  N 

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A  message  from  Dr.  Mortimer  J.  Adler, 

EDITOR,  THE  SYNTOPICON 

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complete  their  education.  The  fullness  of  time  is  required  for  both." 


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18 


This 

man 

is 

looking 

into 

your 
future 

How  does  it  look?  Rosy?  Free  of 
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THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


* 


nesses.  (Consequently  Mr.  Nixon 
had  to  move  verj  gingerl)  indeed,  to 
avoid  .imv  suspii  ion  thai  he  was  try- 
ing to  usurp  power,  and  to  keep  oul 
ol  fi^liis  with  Adams  and  the  othei 
regents.)  Now  thai  the  Presidenl  is 
partiall)  recovered,  he  presumabl) 
will  be  even  more  reluctant.  And 
thai  reluctance  surely  will  be  encour- 
aged l>\  all  the  people  in  both  par- 
ties who  dislike  oi  clisiiust  Mr. 
Nixon,  and  bv  the  other  members  ol 
the  governing  council  who  naturally 
are  nol  eagei  to  yield  him  then 
places. 

Moreover  i li is  scheme  raises  a  ma- 
joi  constitutional  question.  Can  the 
Presidenl  legall)  delegate  his  ulti- 
mate authority?  There  is.  ol  course, 
no  precedent  on  iliis  point,  but  a 
number  ol  constitutional  lawyers  be- 
lieve ih. ii  so  Ions;  as  he  retains  the 
title  ol  ollu  e,  the  dual  responsibility 
loi  executive  action  falls  on  him. 
How,  then,  can  he  give  genuine 
power  to  someone  else,  howevei 
trusted?  And  il  Mr.  Nixon  tried  to 
exercise  this  power,  could  lie  make 
his  dec  isions  stic  k? 

l'oi  example,  people  (  lose  to  Mr. 
Nixon  believe  thai  il  he  were  to  suc- 
ceed to  the  While  House  one  ol  his 
In  si  acts  would  be  to  fire  Dulles  and 
Benson.  Could  he  get  away  with  this 
as  Deputy  President?  Wouldn't  both 
cabinet  officers  appeal  over  his  head 
to  Mr.  Eisenhower— who,  alter  all, 
appointed  them  and  would  legally 
remain  their  only  boss?  On  the  other 
hand,  if  Mr.  Nixon  did  not  feel  free 
to  pick  his  own  help,  how  could  he 
be  expected  to  keep  the  stoic? 

AGAIN,  suppose  that  the 
Deputy  President  should  de- 
cide at  some  point  that  ballistic  mis- 
siles were  making  the  Strategic  Air 
Force  obsolete,  and  that  its  appropri- 
ations should  be  sharph  cut.  Can 
anybody  imagine  General  Curtis  Le- 
May— or  the  aircraft  industry,  and  its 
powerful  Congressional  allies— ac- 
cepting that  decision  from  anybody 
but  Mi.  Eisenhower  himself?  (In 
fact,  I  hey  probably  wouldn't  accept 
it  from  him  either,  without  a  ruckus 
which  would  shake  Washington  from 
the  Pentagon  to  the  Burning  Tree 
Country  Club.)  And  could  the  old 
soldier  bear  to  keep  his  hands  off 
such  a  decision— knowing  that  the 
very  life  of  the  nation  might  depend 
on  it? 


So  it  seems  all  too  likely  that  Gov- 
ernment l>\  Deput)  would  requires 
superhuman  degree  ol  sell-abnega- 
tion from  a  lot  ol  very  human  char- 
acters. Even  so,  ii  would  take  vears 
ol  friction,  experiment,  and  heart- 
break  to  gel  the  new  system  shaken 
down  into  working  order.  During 
(hat  period  the  stiain  on  Mr.  Eisen- 
hower verj  possibly  would  be  greater 
than  it  is  today. 

I  he  onl\   kind  ol  delegation  that 
seems   really    feasible,    therefore,    is 

prett)  minor.  The  President  might 
turn  ovei  to  Mi.  Nixon  a  lew  more 
ceremonial  functions -meeting  visit- 
ing kin^s  at  the  airport,  greeting 
(.ill  Scout  conventions,  presiding  at 
slate  dinners,  and  the  like.  He  might 
depend  on  him  a  little  more  lor  liai- 
son with  Congress,  and  lor  repair 
and  managemenl  ol  the  Republican 
party  machine;  but  that  is  about  all. 
While  this  would  help,  in  a  small 
way,  ii  could  by  no  means  remedy 
the  dangerous  weaknesses  of  the 
presenl  situation. 

TI I  E   only    thing    that   can,   ap- 
parently,  is  for  Mr.  Nixon  to 
lake  lull  title  to  the  Presidency. 

Like  a  considerable  number  of 
other  people,  1  have  always  been 
able  to  keep  my  enthusiasm  for  Mr. 
Nixon  within  bounds.  I  can  think  of 
a  dozen  other  men  I  would  rather  see 
in  the  White  House.  But  that  is 
irrelevant.  Mr.  Nixon  is  the  only 
man  who  can,  constitutionally,  take 
ovei  the  job.  During  the  last  three 
years  he  has  given  every  evidence  of 
training  lor  it  conscientiously;  and— 
lor  the  reasons  mentioned  by  Wil- 
liam S.  White  in  the  January  issue 
ol  I larper's—he  might  well  prove  to 
be  an  abler  executive  than  many 
people  now  suspect. 

In  any  case,  he  would  be  a  stronger 
executive  than  Mr.  Eisenhower  can 
ever  be  again.  He  could  work  full 
time.  He  would  at  least  give  us 
somebody  in  lull  charge  of  the  gov- 
ernment. 

And  today,  of  all  times,  this  coun- 
try needs  somebody  in  charge.  A 
leaky  ship  in  a  hurricane,  with  a 
committee  on  the  bridge  and  a 
crippled  captain  sending  occasional 
whispers  up  the  speaking  tube  from 
the  sick  bay,  might  stay  afloat.  But 
its  chances  would  be  a  lot  better  if 
the  First  Mate— any  First  Mate— took 
the  wheel. 


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Among  Our  Contributors 


BOUND   FOR   THE 
ETERNAL    SHOWERS? 

PERHAPS  the  chief  thing 
Marl  in  Mayei  is  trying  to  do  in 
his  article  on  "What  Is  Advertising 
Good  For?"  (p.  25)  is  to  encourage 

advertising  men  to  respect  their 
work.  II  lie  suit  reds  he  may  reduce 
the  ulcer  count  on  Madison  Avenue, 
but  humane  as  this  result  would  be, 
it  does  not  seem  to  us  the  main  value 
of  Mr.  Mayer's  bracing  logic.  Re- 
spect for  a  medium— whether  it  is 
words  or  pictures  or  rocket  fuel— is 
even  more  important.  An  art  or  a 
craft  has  its  inner  goals  and  laws 
and,  in  an  aesthetic  sense,  requires 
no  other  justification.  Commercially 
speaking,  of  course,  there  is  always 
the  sponsor;  but  the  authority  of  the 
medium  itself  should  exercise  ulti- 
mate control  over  the  adman,  as  it 
does  over  the  poet  or  painter  or  sci- 
entist. In  the  long  run,  it  will  get 
him  farther  than  merely  catering  to 
the  customer. 

A  novel  expression  of  respect  for 
his  profession— without  self-ballyhoo 
—was  recently  demonstrated  by  an 
insider,  John  P.  Cunningham,  presi- 
dent of  a  prominent  advertising 
agency,  speaking  to  his  colleagues  in 
the  Association  of  National  Adver- 
tisers. He  began  by  admitting  that 
television— a  "thrilling  new  adver- 
tising tool"— is  suffering  under  a 
crescendo  of  criticism  for  the  "creep- 
ing mediocrity"  of  its  programing; 
and  that  advertising  was  a  respon- 
sible party  together  with  the  net- 
works. 

On  the  basis  of  depth  interviews 
with  TV  watchers,  Cunningham  and 
Walsh  had  measured  the  Boredom 
Factor  in  ten  well-known  programs, 
from  "I  Remember  Mama"  (which 
scaled  lowest,  11)  to  "Arthur  God- 
frey" (which  scaled  highest,  47). 
While  a  low  Boredom  Factor  doesn't 
mean  that  a  show  is  necessarily  a 
good  buy,  or  a  high  Boredom  Factor 
the  reverse,  nevertheless,  Mr.  Cun- 
ningham said,  it  "causes  dial-twitch- 
ing,   vacant-minded    viewing,    lower 


ratings,  and,  as  l.n  as  TV  advei  tising 
is  concerned,  less  penetration-per- 
skull-per-dollai ." 

Imitation,  Mr.  Cunningham 
added,  compounds  the  boredom. 
The  massive  waxes  of  imitation  to- 
da)  are  qui/  shows,  singing  emcees, 
and  "adult"  westerns— with  quiz 
shows,  loi  example,  propagating  like 
amoebas,  so  that  there  are  actually 
lil  such  programs  on  TV  even  week. 
\s  lot   westerns,  he  commented: 

"I'm  brash  enough  to  say  that  any- 
body who  Inns  another  western,  un- 
less it  is  a  marked  creative  departure 
from  the  pattern  (as  'The  $64,000 
Question'  was  in  the  qui/  field  two 
years  ago)  ought  to  turn  in  his  gray 
flannel  suit  and  go  to  the  eternal 
showei  s." 

Along  with  the  increase  of  bore- 
dom in  the  past  five  years  has  gone  a 
general  depression  of  audience  rat- 
ings for  top  shows  (the  top  five  had 
ratings  of  57.9  in  1952  and  only  41.5 
in  1957).  However,  since  the  total 
audience  is  larger  today,  there  are 
more  people  watching  even  the 
lower-rated  shows  than  used  to  watch 
the  higher-rated  ones;  the  audience 
is  more  divided;  and  there  is  greater 
opportunity  for  exceptional  pro- 
graming. 

"Now  what  does  all  this  amount 
to?"  Mr.  Cunningham  asked.  "How 
much  should  we  be  concerned? 

"Our  primary  obligation  is  to  the 
sales  curves  of  our  companies,  of 
course. 

"But  it  is  much  too  easy  to  say— 
'I  buy  by  ratings,'  or,  'Give  the  peo- 
ple what  they  want— I'll  buy  it.' 

"I  maintain  that  our  obligation  to 
TV  goes  much,  much  deeper  than 
that. 

"As  advertising  men,  we  must  be 
interested  in  all  TV— not  only  in  our 
own  programs.  We  want  it  to  be  a 
strong,  well-rounded  medium.  .  .  . 
Even  the  most  ardent  devotees  have 
an  obligation  to  their  companies  to 
look  around  and  beyond  the  rat- 
ings.  ... 

"Unlike  any  magazine,  TV  with 
its  limited  channels  must  deal  largely 
in    things   of   mass   interest.    But    it 


must  certainly  not   try   to  reach  all 
the  people— all  the  time.  .  .  . 

"Now  a  man  cm  sii  by  his  own 
lie. ii  ill  and  look  around  the  curve  of 
the  earth.  He  can  peer  into  the  par- 
liament of  nations.  He  can  see  his 
own  desiinx  being  shaped.  His  own 
soul  being  saved.  .  .  . 

"We  liuisi  never  forget  that  the 
airwaves  do  not  belong  to  the  ad-l 
vertisers— nor  to  the  networks— nor 
to  the  FCC— nor  to  the  federal  gov- 
ei  nment. 

"They  belong  to  the  people  of  the' 
United  States." 

.  .  .  Martin  Mayer,  who  is  not  an  in- 
sider in  advertising,  has  just  com- 
pleted a  remarkably  informed  book 
about  it  which  will  be  published  in  I 
March:  Madison  Avenue,  U.  S.  A. 
His  article  is  adapted  from  the  book. 
He  is  the  author  also  of  Wall  Street: 
Men  and  Money  and  of  a  novel! 
about  politics,   The  Experts. 

.  .  .  Undoubtedly  the  Animal  of  the 
Year  in  1957  was  the  small,  tough, 
curly-tailed  hunting  dog  which  cir- 
cled the  Earth  in  Sputnik  II  during 
November  and  made  the  name 
"Laika"  world-renowned.  Whatever 
specific  facts  Soviet  scientists  may 
have  learned  from  Laika's  heroic 
last  days,  she  certainly  demonstrated 
Arthur  C.  Clarke's  thesis  in  "Our 
Dumb  Colleagues"  (p.  32)— that  ani- 
mals can  play  a  role  in  the  future  as 
co-workers  with  men. 

We  recently  watched  a  white- 
coated  technician  operating  a  "scin- 
tillator" in  the  radioisotopes  labora- 
tory of  a  city  hospital.  The  big 
gray-clad  machine  clacked  away, 
moving  its  arm  with  grave  precision 
and  chattering  in  spurts  as  it  picked 
up  signals  from  the  patient  on  the 
table.  Unlike  the  machine,  which  was 
rooted  to  its  spot,  the  human  tender 
was  all  over  the  place,  figuring, 
watching,  writing,  kneeling,  stretch- 
ing, rushing  about  to  check  patient 
and  machine  from  above  and  below 
and  all  sides.  During  the  ten  min- 
utes of  the  test,  he  was  as  active  as  an 
ape  in  a  tree;  and  we  wondered 
whether  a  strong,  dexterous,  intelli- 
gent  chimpanzee  couldn't  have  been 
trained  to  do  the  job. 

Arthur  Clarke,  friend  and  tender 
of  Elizabeth  the  Chimpanzee,  is  a 
scientist,  former  RAF  radar  expert, 
present  sea-reef  explorer  and  photog- 
rapher,   who    writes    books    during 


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22 


NEW    DISCOVERIES 

About   the   Birth.   Life,   and  Death 
of  the  Sim  and  Other  Stars 

\  noted  science  writer  gives  the 
first  comprehensive  report  on  the 
surprising  findings  which  arc  com- 
ing from  the  200-inch  Palomar 
telescope,  radio  telescopes,  and 
other  new  tools  for  exploring  our 
I  niverse. 

By  George  W .  Gray 

MONTANA: 

The  Frontier  Went  Thataway 

\n  Englishman's  love  letter 
ahout  a  way  of  life  which  he  found 
""near  perfection" — and  his  fore- 
cast about  a  state  which  "is  shaping 
for  a  leap  in  the  dark. 

By  Herbert  Howarth 

THE  DIALOGUE 

Of  Freud  and  Jung 

The  most  famous  feud  in  the  his- 
tory of  psychoanalysis  may  pro- 
duce some  unexpectedly  useful  re- 
sults— if  the  partisans  are  ever 
willing  to  admit  that  each  of  their 
great  leaders  was  dealing  with  only 
one  side  of  the  human  mind. 

By  Gerald  Sykes 

THE  BUDAPESTS 

An  intimate  portrait  of  the  quar- 
tet which  admits  it  is  the  world's 
greatest. 

By  Martin  Mayer 


Harper's 

-*-        magazine 


NEXT     MON  TH 


PERSONAL     &     OTHERWISE 


and  between  nips  to  Ceylon,  the 
U.S.A.,  and  other  points  remote 
from  England  his  home.  Besides  ten 
hooks  ol  science  fiction,  he  lias  writ- 
ten  volumes  foi  the  layman  on  Inter- 
planetary Flight,  The  Exploration 
o)  Space,  and.  lasi  year,  The  Reefs 
o]  Taprobane  and  The  Making  of  a 
Moon. 

loi  1958  he  has  scheduled  The 
Othei  Side  <>/  the  Sky,  short  stories, 
and  Voice  Across  the  Sea,  about 
transoceanic  communications. 

.  .  .  George  F.  Kennan  (author  ol  "A 
Chance  to  Withdraw  Out  I  roops  in 
Europe,"  p.  34)  was  U.S.  Ambassa- 
dor to  Moscow  at  the  time  of  the 
Insi  Eisenhowei  Presidential  cam- 
paign; and  his  much  discussed  sum 
ming  up  ol  American  policy  toward 
Russia  as  "containment"  became  a 
centra]  target  ol  Republican  attack. 
1  hough  he  has  been  in  so-called  "re- 
tirement" since  1953,  Mr.  Kennan 
has  established  himself,  through  lec- 

I  m  i  s    and    artic  Irs.    as    perhaps    our 

most  influential  "Minority  Diplo- 
mat" as  the  New  York  Times  called 
him  wlun  he  delivered  the  lectures 
ovei  the  BBC  that  are  the  basis  foi 
his  arti<  les  in  this  issue  and  the  next. 

He  has  also  made  headlines  as  an 
historian,  possibly  a  rarer  feat.  When 
he  resigned  from  government  service 
he  went  to  the  Institute  for  Ad- 
vanced Stud)  at  Princeton  to  work 
on  a  history  of  Russia  from  1917 
io  1920.  The  first  volume,  Russia 
Leaves  the  War,  won  the  National 
book  Award  lor  1956,  the  Bancroft 
Prize,  and  the  Pulitzer  Prize.  His  ar- 
ticle, "Overdue  Changes  in  Our  For- 
eign Policy,"  in  the  August  1956 
issue  of  Harper's  won  a  benjamin 
Franklin    Magazine   Award. 

Mr.  Kennan  has  been  Visiting 
Eastman  Professor  of  American  His- 
ioi\  ai  Oxford  during  this  academic 
year.  His  complete  BBC  lectures  (the 
Reith  Series)  will  be  published  here 
March  third,  with  the  title,  Russia, 
the  Atom  and  the   West. 

.  .  .  The  American  movie  audience 
continues  to  decline— figures  gath- 
ered by  Sindlinger  showed  a  28.4 
per  cent  slump  in  1957  below  1956. 
This  is  a  recognized  long-time  trend, 
most  often  attributed  to  television; 
but  there  is  an  inconsistency  in  audi- 
ence interest  that  baffles  both  movie- 
makers   and    trend-takers. 


One  possible  clue  to  the  mystery— 
from  the  point  ol  view  of  the  busi- 
nessmen  behind  the  producers— may 
be  found  in  the  story  of  "What  Two 
Lawyers  Are  Doing  to  Hollywood" 
(p.   12)  In  Murrav  Teigh  Bloom. 

Mi.  Bloom  has  written  several 
hundred  magazine  articles  and  a 
book  about  counterfeiters  called 
Money  of  Their  Own.  His  article  on 
the  "World's  Greatest  Counterfeit- 
ers," which  appealed  in  Harper's 
lafet  July,  will  be  televised  this  year 
bv  Studio  One. 

.  .  .  John  W.  Gardner,  humanist  and 
executive,  a  parent  and  an  authority 
on  national  problems  of  education, 
suggests  some  answers  to  the  vexa- 
tious family  question  ol  "How  to 
Choose  a  College,  If  Any"  (p.  I!)).  As 
president  ol  the  Carnegie  Corpora- 
tion of  \.  Y.  and  of  the  Carnegie 
Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of 
Teaching,  Mr.  Gardnei  watches  over 
main  experimental  programs  for 
training  talented  youth. 

Mr.  Gardner's  connection  with  the 
problem  of  What  College,  II  Any  is 
close:  he  has  one  daughter  in  her  sec- 
ond year  at  Radcliffe,  and  another 
facing  tin  college  decision  this 
spring.  si\  years  ago  when  Francesca, 
the  younger,  entered  S<  arsdale  junior 
high,  he  asked  her  what  she  liked 
best  in  school. 

"I  don't  know  what  I  like  the 
very  best,"  she  said,  "but,  Daddy,  I 
do  love  those  fire  drills!" 

Now  an  outstanding  student, 
Francesca  commented  on  her  father's 
article,  "It's  great,  Dad,  but  if  I 
hadn't  been  so  indecisive  would  you 
ever  have  thought  it  out  so  clearly?" 

.  .  .  "An  Old  Boy  Who  Made  Vio- 
lins" (p.  55)  is  Ben  Maddow's  second 
story  in  Harper's.  He  wrote  44 
Gravel  Sheet,  a  novel,  a  film  portrait 
of  Los  Angeles  called  "The  Savage 
Eye,"    and    many   published    poems. 

.  .  .  "Hospitals  Found  in  Germ  Dan- 
ger—Resistance to  Antibiotics  is 
Cited  by  Surgeons  for  World-wide 
Epidemic."  Thus  the  New  York 
Times  headlined  a  report  on  discus- 
sions by  a  panel  of  doctors  at  the 
American  College  of  Surgeons  meet- 
ing in  Atlantic  City  last  fall.  Such 
newspaper  publicity  was  bound  to 
arouse  a  good  deal  of  uninformed 
speculation.     Dr.    Vernon    Knight's 


23 


P     &     O 

"Antibiotics:  Too  Much  of  a  Good 
Thing?"  (p.  60)  gives  perspective  on 
this  kind  of  news. 

Dr.  Knight  is  associate  professor 
of  medicine  at  the  Vanderbilt  Uni- 
versity Medical  School  and  director 
of  the  George  Hunter  Laboratory  for 
Study  of  Infectious  Diseases.  He  had 
his  medical  training  at  Harvard 
Medical  School  and  at  New  York 
Hospital-Cornell  Medical  Center, 
and  served  in  the  Normandy  inva- 
sion. From  1950  to  1954  he  was  direc- 
tor of  the  Laboratory  of  Infectious 
Disease  at  the  Cornell  Medical  Divi- 
sion of  Bellevue  Hospital. 

.  .  .  Clots  of  rural  newcomers  in  some 
industrial  cities  of  the  Midwest  have 
become  a  community  problem,  as 
Albert  N.  Votaw  shows  in  "The  Hill- 
billies Invade  Chicago"  (p.  64),  but 
there  are  techniques  of  getting  at  it 
—given  time  and  the  will.  Mr.  Votaw 
is  executive  director  of  the  Uptown 
Chicago  Commission,  the  private 
community  group  which  has  done 
most  of  the  work  so  far  in  his  city. 

Formerly,  Mr.  Votaw  served  at  the 
Marshall  Plan  headquarters  in  Paris; 
he  was  a  newspaperman  and  foun- 
dation director  in  Chicago,  and  took 
an  M.A.  degree  at  the  University  of 
Chicago. 

.  .  .  "The  Voyage  of  the  Lucky 
Dragon"  (p.  72),  which  concludes 
this  month,  is  adapted  from  the  book 
by  Dr.  Ralph  E.  Lapp,  to  be  pub- 
lished in  February.  Dr.  Lapp  is  a 
nuclear  physicist  who  worked  on  the 
Manhattan  Project  and  headed  the 
government's  scientific  group  at  the 
Bikini  A-bomb  tests  of  1946.  He  is 
now  director  of  Nuclear  Science 
Service  in  Washington.  His  investi- 
gations for  his  report  on  the  fate  of 
the  fishermen  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 
took  him  to  Japan  and  made  him 
friends  there  of  scientists,  reporters, 
and  the  crew  themselves.  He  is  the 
author  of  Atoms  and  People. 

.  .  .  The  poems  this  month  are  light 
and  free.  "Florence:  At  the  Villa 
Jernyngham"  (p.  68)  is  from  a  new 
volume  by  Sir  Osbert  Sitwell,  to  be 
published  in  England  under  the 
title,  On  the  Continent. 

"And  I  say  the  Hell  with  It"  (p. 
54)  is  by  Philene  Hammer  of  St. 
Louis,  who  has  founded  and  directed 
theaters  for  children. 


More  than  1,500  laugh-provoking  stories 
to  brighten  your  speeches,  dramatize  your 
ideas,  and  make  your  friends  laugh  .  .  . 

THE  SPEAKER'S  HMDB00K 
DF  HUMOR 

How  to  Tell,  Select  and  Create 
Funny    Stories    for   Every   Occasion 

By  MAXWELL  DROKE 

•  Let  Maxwell  Droke,  an  "old  pro"— in  experience— show  you  the 
finer  points  of  telling  a  funny  story,  and  put  in  your  hands  a  rib- 
tickling  treasury  of  more  than  1500  sure-fire  stories  classified  under 
59  helpful  headings. 


Here's    some   of  the 
expert  advice  Maxwell 
Droke   gives   you : 

•  How    to     Introduce     a     Story 
Casually. 

•  How    to    Polish    and    Person- 
alize   a    Story. 

•  How  to  Build  Up  the  Laughs. 

•  How     to     Deliver     the     Final 
Punch    Line. 

•  How    to    Determine    Whether 
a    Story    is   Worth    Telling. 

•  How  to  Choose  the  Most  Ap- 
propriate   Story. 

•  How    to    Adapt    a    Story    to 
Suit   a   Special   Occasion. 

•  How    to    Bring    Old    Favorites 
Up   to    Date. 

•  How    to    Create    New    Jokes 
from  Current  News  Items. 

AND 

1451  separate  and  numbered 
stories  (not  including  over  100 
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instant  reference  according  to 
subject.  Separate  Story-Topic 
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index. 

464   big,   clearly 
printed    pages. 


THE  SPEAKER'S  HANDBOOK  OF  HU- 
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Droke  packs  the  first  barrel  with  expert,  in- 
side, "how  to"  hints  that  public  speakers 
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to  Select  Your  Funny  Stories,  How  to  Adapt 
Your  Stories  to  a  Special  Occasion,  How  to 
Make  Up  Your  Own  Stories.  What  Stories 
You  Shouldn't  Tell— and  Why.  How  to  Build 
Up  Your  Stories,  How  to  Deliver  the  Punch 
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FIND  THE  RIGHT  STORY  IN  A  FLASH! 

The  second  barrel  of  THE  SPEAKER'S 
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100  "examples"  told  by  Maxwell  Droke  in  the 
first  "how  to"  part  of  THE  SPEAKER'S 
HANDBOOK  OF  HUMOR.  These  1451  sto- 
ries are  expertly  classified  under  59  headings, 
suitable  for  every  type  of  audience  and  every 
occasion.  Suppose  you  want  to  tell  a  story 
about  Politicians.  Simply  turn  to  the  detailed 
index  and  you'll  find  the  just-right  story 
you  need  indicated  by  number.  The  same 
goes  for  Animals,  English  Stories,  Preachers, 
Sports,  Salesmanship,  the  Battle  of  the  Sexes, 
Women,  Children.  Whatever  your  need, 
here  it  is  at  your  finger  tips.  And  the  stories 
are  all  fresh,  bright,  in  good  taste,  told  with 
a   professional   touch. 

A   GOLD-MINE   OF  PROFESSIONAL  TIPS 

THE  SPEAKER'S  HANDBOOK  OF  HU- 
MOR is  a  gold-mine  of  valuable  advice  and 
suggestions  for  anyone  who  speaks  in  public 
before  gatherings  of  all  kinds,  large  or  small. 
And  for  everybody,  the  speaker  as  well  as 
the  general  reader,  it's  a  side-splitting  treas- 
use-house  of  laughter.  For  your  increased 
success  as  a  speaker  and  for  hours  of  good 
fun,    order   your    copy   NOW! 


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Name     . 
Address 
City    .  .  . 
State    .  . 


3913E 


The  moment  you 


KNOW 


•  /*  f  ',  t 


There  are  some  things, sonic  major  and  wonder 
i ill  things,  1 1 i.i i  we  may  Know  in  one  moment : 

I.;  1 1  .1  boy? 

Is  it  a  girl? 

I  )kI  I  win  ( he  scholarship? 

bid  l  gel  the  job? 

Bui  i  great  manj  other  major  and  wonderful 
things  take  years  of  following  and  caring.  With 
them,  it's  not  just  one  moment,  but  the  entire 
process  of  knowing  thai  is  great. 

Such  things  as  a  nation's  historj ,  or  a  world's, 

as   man's   lij'.lil    a;',ainsl    polio   and    cancer,   as 


new  concepts  of  human  rights  and  new  con 
quests  of  space  and  lime- 
All  these  continue  week   after  week,  and 
many  other  things  all  around  (hem.  big  or 

small,  solemn  or  gay,  all  pari   of  mankind's 

ceaseless  story,  thai  story  we  call,  so  coolly, 
"the  news." 

lis  greatness  varies,  ils  Interest  newer,  and 
(his  may  he  one  reason  thai  more  than  two 
and  a  half  million  families  in  (lie  free  world  are 

year  after  year  readers  of  time, 

Read  TIME— The  Weekly  Newsmagazine 


Harper 

MAGAlIz  I  NE 


WHAT  IS  ADVERTISING 

GOOD  FOR? 


A  suggestion  for  a  new  theory  of  advertising  .  .  .  what  role 
it  really  plays  in  our  society  .  .  .  and  how  to  tell 
whether  it  is  the  hero,  the  villain,  or  merely  a  butler 


MARTIN   MAYER 

Author  of  the  forthcoming  book, 
Madison  Avenue,  U.  S.  A. 


CONSIDERING  the  importance  of  ad- 
vertising—both as  a  part  of  our  cultural 
climate  and  as  a  major  weapon  of  competition— 
the  literature  on  the  subject  is  appallingly  feeble. 
Virtually  everything  intelligent  that  has  been 
written  about  it  in  the  last  forty  years  can  be 
plated  on  one  small  shelf— half-a-dozen  books,  a 
dozen  pamphlets,   perhaps   twenty  speeches. 

This  failure  to  treat  a  serious  subject  seriously 
has  been,  in  part,  inescapable,  because  the  men 
who  know  advertising  best  are  usually  ill-equipped 
to  discuss  it  analytically.  Advertising's  obvious 
function  is  to  sell— which  means  that  its  ablest 
practitioners  must  be  people  with  a  highly- 
developed  bump  of  enthusiasm  and  a  slight 
depression  where  the  critical  instinct  ought 
to  be. 


But  the  frivolity  of  our  customary  approach 
to  advertising  also  stems  from  two  American 
folk  myths.  Although  they  contradict  each  other, 
most  people  manage  to  believe  in  both: 

(1)  They  are  confident  that,  personally,  they 
are  seldom  if  ever  influenced  by  advertising; 
and  (2)  they  believe  that  advertising  is  im- 
mensely powerful  in  molding  the  actions  of  the 
community. 

Neither  myth  bears  much  relation  to  reality, 
but  both  survive,  feeding  on  the  extreme  scarcity 
of  hard  (acts  about  the  actual  effectiveness  of 
advertising  in  the  market  place. 

It  is  virtually  impossible  for  a  company  to  find 
out  with  any  precision  how  much  of  a  recent 
sales  increase  is  due  to  advertising.  In  fact,  it  is 
by  no  means  easy  to  determine  whether  or  not  a 
given  advertising  campaign  is  creating  any  sales 
at  all.  Too  many  hands  play  a  part  in  the  selling 
process.  One  of  the  great  advertising  and  sales 
success  stories  of  1956,  for  example,  was  Procter 
&  Gamble's  Gleem  toothpaste.  Compton  Adver- 
tising touted  it  as  the  substance  of  choice  lor 
those  who  wished  to  avoid  cavities  but  could  not 
brush  their  teeth  after  every  meal.    Meanwhile, 


26 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


door-to-dooi  canvassers  were  on  the  road,  dis- 
tributing a  tree  tube  or  a  coupon  good  foi  a  free 
tube  of  Gleem  to  nearly  ever)  household  in  the 
country.  \m\  the  Procter  fe  Gamble  salesmen, 
backed  by  the  company's  reputation  as  a  very 
tough  outfit,  went  rolling  through  the  nation's 
stores  with  .1  steamroller  of  a  deal  to  convince 
retailers  that  (liey  should  stock  and  prominently 
display  the  new  dentifi  ice. 

Mow  much  credii  for  the  success  of  Gleem 
should  go  to  thi'  advertising?  How  much  more 
(or  less)  Gleem  would  have  been  sold  if  the 
advertising  campaign  had  been  different,  or  if 
more  or  less  money  had  been  spent  on  it?  How 
man)  angels  can  dance  on  the  head  ol  a  pin  on 
which  a  machinisl  has  engraved  the  Lord's 
Prayei  ? 

Another  difficulty  is  thai  the  facts  about  adver- 
tising—even when  the)  can  be  isolated— will  not 
hold  still  long  enough  for  the  theoretician  to 
catch  them.  In  all  the  behavioral  sciences, 
a    valid    insight    is    good    only    lor    the    moment 

CRmtAL 
/N$nMtr 

J* 


.  .  .  Advertising's 
ablest  practitioners 


of  perception,  and  for  an  uncertain  but  prob- 
ably short  lime  afterwards.  And  in  advertising, 
where  the  sands  of  consumer  preference  are  con- 
stantly blown  about  by  the  howling  winds  of 
competition,  it  has  been  extraordinarily  hard  to 
find  a  foundation  for  a  theory  which  will  explain 
what  the  industry  does  and  why. 

By  and  large,  economists  have  ducked  this 
problem.  Business  theorists,  who  must  deal  with 
advertising  somehow,  have  handled  the  subject 
by  determinedly  sweeping  it  under  a  wall-to-wall 
rug  which  they  call  '"marketing."  In  recent  years, 
academicians  hour  the  fields  of  sociology,  cul- 
tural anthropology,  social  psychology,  and  even 
psychoanalysis  have  descended  on  advertising 
with  their  assorted  insights,  bodies  of  theory,  and 
nostrums,  and  have  secured  a  truly  remarkable 
amount  ol  publicity  for  their  efforts.  The  dis- 
ciplines they  practice,  however,  are  notoriously 
unstable,  and  their  work  has  been  aimed  almost 
exclusively  at  finding  something  "useful"  for 
the  advertiser.   With  a  few  exceptions,  their  con- 


tributions  toward  the  understanding  ol  advertis- 
ing have  been  nonexistent,  superficial,  or  mis- 
Leading. 

WHICH     HALF    IS    WASTED? 

ANYONE  attempting  to  grasp  what  ad- 
vertising does  in  our  society  must  account 
for  a  huge  number  ol  balky  lads.  These  are 
most  prominent: 

(1 )  Some  advertising  is  immensely  effective  in 
selling  a  product . 

Though  proofs  are  hard  to  come  by,  only  .1 
must  unreasonable  man  could  deny  the  success 
ol  Leo  Burnett's  sophisticated  tough  ol  a  Marl- 
boro man,  William  Esty's  dumb  but  happy  Win- 
ston's-taste-good-like-a-cigarette-should,  or  Ted 
Bates's  smoothly  reassuring  20,000  filters  in  a 
Viceroy.  Generalh  speaking,  there  are  no  im- 
portant differences  among  the  leading  brands  ol 
cigarettes  except  those  created  by  advertising, 
and— although  Marlboro's  package  (the  so-called 
flip-top  box)  was  unquestionably  helpful  in 
establishing  the  brand— no  "marketing"  elements 
other  than  the  advertising  can  seriously  claim 
any  major  share  of  the  credit  for  the  success  ol 
these  three  filter  cigarettes. 

(2)  Most  advertising  campaigns  are  only 
faintly  successful,  and  many  fail  utterly. 

The  classic  statement  of  the  situation  goes 
back  to  John  Wanamaker  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury: "I  know  half  the  money  I  spend  on  adver- 
tising is  wasted,  but  I  can  never  find  out  which 
half." 

Horace  Schwerin,  who  tests  television  commer- 
c  ials  before  a  theater  audience,  claims  that  nearly 
half  of  those  he  screens  have  no  apparent  influ- 
ence on  the  brand  preferences  of  the  people  in 
his  theater.  Daniel  Starch  finds  that  three- 
quarters  of  the  people  who  have  read  a  magazine 
fail  to  recognize  the  average  advertisement  in 
the  issue  when  it  is  shown  to  them  in  an  inter- 
view. George  Gallup  says  that  as  many  as  one- 
third  of  the  people  who  remember  many  of  the 
details  of  a  television  commercial  or  an  adver- 
tisement in  a  magazine  have  no  idea  what 
product  (let  alone  what  brand)  the  sales  pitch 
hoped  to  sell. 

(3)  An  elaborate  and  apparently  triumphant 
advertising  campaign  which  sells  great  quantities 
of  a  new  product  to  new  customers  will  not  ivin 
repeated  sales,  if  the  product  is  in  fact  per- 
ceptibly inferior  to  its  competitors. 

Examples  are  a  soap  and  a  hair  dye  which  sold 
heavily  in  their  early  months  and  then  collapsed, 


WHAT     IS     ADVERTISING     GOOD     FOR? 


27 


because  the  first  version  of  each  product  was 
defective.  The  factors  which  caused  failure  in 
both  brands  have  since  been  corrected,  but  it  is 
significant  that  neither  has  ever  been  able  to 
regain  the  public  favor  it  enjoyed  shortly  after 
it  was  launched.  Even  the  most  heavily  adver- 
tised brand  cannot  hold  its  market  if  it  is  ob- 
servably inferior  to  others  selling  at  the  same 
price.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  an  adver- 
tised brand  can  command  a  higher  price  than  an 
identical  product  sold  without  advertising. 

(4)  Most  brands  of  "packaged  goods"  can 
attain  only  a  certain  maximum  share  of  the 
market  for  their  sort  of  product. 

Beyond  this  saturation  level— almost  always 
below  50  per  cent  of  the  total  market— advertis- 
ing will  not  greatly  increase  sales,  however  in- 
telligently it  is  practiced  and  however  much 
money  is  spent  on  it.  (Stopping  the  advertising, 
however,  will  produce  a  loss.)  It  is  axiomatic  in 
the  toothpaste  business,  for  example,  that  a 
brand  with  30  per  cent  of  the  market  may  throw 
a  fresh  $10  million  into  advertising  to  gain  per- 
haps a  5  per  cent  increase  in  sales;  while  the 
same  $10  million,  devoted  to  advertising  a  new 
brand,  may  give  the  new  brand  a  20  per  cent 
share-of-market. 

(5)  Advertising  cannot  increase  sales  for  a 
product  if  there  is  an  over-all  trend  against  this 
kind  of  commodity.  (It  may,  of  course,  increase 
the  sales  of  a  brand  by  giving  the  brand  a  greater 
share  of  a  smaller  market.) 

Brewers  spend  more  than  $100  million  a  year 
in  advertising,  but  per  capita  consumption  of 
beer  declines  every  year.  Meanwhile,  on  the 
rising  side  of  the  trend,  vintners  spend  only 
about  $15  million  a  year  and  annually  increase 
the  per  capita  consumption  of  wine.  In  1956, 
the  four  leading  non-filter  cigarettes  increased 
their  advertising  expenditures  by  at  least  $3  mil- 
lion—and sold  16.5  billion  fewer  cigarettes, 

(6)  Given  two  identical  samples,  carrying  two 
different  brand  names  and  advertised  with  two 
different  slogans,  most  consumers  will  say  that 
one  is  superior  to  the  other  on  grounds  of  taste, 
aroma,  consistency,  durability,  etc. 

The  Philip  Morris  Company  has  found  that 
when  people  puff  two  cigarettes  alternately,  they 
cannot  in  fact  tell  the  difference  between  them, 
and  that  their  preference  for  one  over  the  other 
will  invariably  reflect  the  influence  of  adver- 
tising. (The  practical  application  of  this  insight 
is  in  the  pre-testing  of  proposed  advertisements, 
which  are  shown  to  panels  of  consumers  while 
they  puff.) 


Foote,  Cone  &  Belding  once  tested  the  strength 
of  a  competitor's  advertising  campaign  by  pack- 
aging two  identical  batches  of  an  ice-cream 
mix— labeling  one  with  their  client's  slogan 
and  the  other  with  the  competitor's  slogan— and 
giving  away  one  of  each  to  a  large  number  of 
housewives.  Shortly  thereafter,  the  agency  sent 
an  interviewer  to  ask  the  women  which  of  the 
two  brands  they  had  preferred.  Only  one-fifth 
of  them  felt  there  was  no  difference  between  the 
two;  all  the  rest  felt  a  marked  preference  for 
one  or  the  other. 


SOMETHING     ADDED 

IS  I  T  possible  to  put  together  a  self-consistent 
theory  which  will  explain  the  facts?  If  so, 
we  might  then  begin  to  understand  the  role 
advertising  actually  plays  in  our  society— and  to 
think  about  it  in  real  terms,  without  the  usual 
notion  that  it  is  the  creature  of  cherubim  or 
imps. 

For  the  last  eighteen  months  I  have  been 
examining  facts  of  this  kind  at  close  range,  re- 
searching and  writing  a  book  about  this  peculiar 
industry.  I  have  talked  to  several  hundred  adver- 
tising men,  including  most  of  the  acknowledged 
leaders  of  the  profession.  I  found  them  remark- 
ably articulate  and  thoughtful  about  the  details 
of  their  work— about  plans  and  procedures  and 
organizations,  and  even  about  the  mysteries  of 
creation.  But  when  we  discussed  the  funda- 
mental nature  of  their  profession,  their  answers 
were  generally   fragmentary   and   disappointing. 

Most  of  them  started  from  the  idea  that 
advertising  "creates  wants."  Some  said,  in  John 
Kennedy's  fifty-year-old  phrase,  that  it  was  "sales- 
manship in  print."  Others  said  that  "it  moves 
you  closer  to  the  purchase,"  or  it  "builds  a  'brand 
image'  "  which  draws  you  subconsciously  toward 
a  product.  (There  were  also  a  few  deplorable 
cynics  who  felt  that  it  "doesn't  do  any  damned 
good  at  all,  but  it's  a  nice  living.")  Even  the 
most  thoughtful  of  the  men  I  saw  were  too 
absorbed  in  the  techniques  of  advertising,  or  too 
concerned  about  its  morality,  to  look  for  a  more 
basic  rationale  for  what  they  were  doing. 

With  some  diffidence,  I  would  like  to  suggest 
that  a  valid  theory  of  advertising  can  be  built. 
Such  a  theory  would  be  helpful  to  economists 
and  sociologists.  It  could  be  quite  useful  to 
mere  consumers.  And  it  might  work  wonders  for 
the  morale  of  the  advertising  men  themselves, 
who  seem  to  be  haunted  by  recurring  doubts 
about  their  value  to  society. 

Any   realistic   approach   to   such   a    theory,    it 


28 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


seems  to  aie,  ought  to  starl  with  the  premise 
that  successful  advertising  adds  a  new  value  to 
the  product.    Only  this  hypothesis  can  account 

for  all  of  the  observed  facts.  Other  theories— 
especiall)  the  argument  that  advertising  "creates 
wants"     leave    some    facts    unexplained. 

Once  added  value  is  assumed  as  the  basis,  the 
faits  fall  into  place.  I  ake  the  case  of  a  soda  pill, 
a  placebo,  which  is  advertised  as  a  headache  cure. 
(Carefull)  advertised,  so  as  not  to  run  afoul  of 
Federal  Trade  Commission  regulations.)  The 
pill  ma)  have  virtually  no  medical  value;  but  it 
will  actually  cure  the  headaches  of  a  number  of 
people  who  take  it.  I  he  suggestion  power  of 
the  advertising  lias  created  a  value  for  an  other- 
wise worthless  product. 

Again,  a  lipsiick  ma)  be  sold  at  Woolworth's 
under  one  name,  and  in  a  department  store 
under  another,  nationally-advertised  name.  Al- 
most any  teen-age  girl  will  prefer  the  latter, 
il  she  can  afford  to  pay  tin  difference.  Wearing 
the  Woolworth's  brand,  she  feels  her  ordinary 
sell;  wearing  the  other,  which  has  been  success- 
fully advertised  as  a  magic  recipe  Eoi  glamor, 
she  feels  a  beauty— and  perhaps  she  is. 

For  the  value  ol  a  product  to  the  person  who 
buys  ii  is  not  limited  to  the  physical  use  he  makes 
of  it.  The  lood  laddist  who  drinks  a  reconsti- 
tuted nonfat  dry  milk  solid  receives  the  value 
of  his  belief  that  he  is  guarding  himself  against 
a  heart  attack.  lire  ambitious  voting  mail  boy 
who  twists  a  lemon  peel  into  his  martini  feels 
that  he  is  doing  something  which  is  done  in  the 
circles  to  which  he  aspires— and  even  il  he  is 
sober,  the  martini  tastes  the  better  for  it.  When- 
ever a  benefit  is  promised  from  the  use  of  a 
product,  and  the  promise  is  believed,  then  the 
use  of  that  product  carries  with  it  a  value  not 
necessarily  inherent  in  the  stuff  itself. 

Except  in  extreme  cases,  such  as  the  placebo 
pill  and  the  cosmetic,  the  value  added  by  adver- 
tising is  small  in  relation  to  those  values  which 
the  product  already  had.  Thus,  advertising  can- 
not, as  an  ordinary  matter,  sell  products  which 
are  observably  inferior  to  their  competitors. 
Again,  this  added  value  can  only  rarely  be  great 
enough  to  overcome  major  trends  in  product 
consumption— either  in  a  single  area,  such  as 
beer,  or  in  the  entire  community,  as  in  time  of 
economic  depression.  During  a  depression, 
money  itself  has  an  added  value,  and  the  num- 
ber on  the  price  tag  becomes  more  important 
than  the  values  created  by  advertising:.  In  more 
prosperous  times,  however,  the  extra,  intangible 
values  of  status  or  security— made  part  of  a  prod- 
uct   by   advertising— may   seem   worth    whatever 


extra  money  the)  cost.  Schweppes  tonic  sells  at 
•i  high  premium  over  the  price  <>l  Canada  Dry, 

largeh  because  ol  the  value  added  bv  David 
( )gih  v  \  advertising. 

One  advertising  campaign  is  highl)  successful 
because  it  adds  a  value  which  seems  important 
to  a  large  section  of  the  community;  another  is 
unsuccessful  because  the  value  added  is  tex>  ti  iv  ial 
to  interest  anybody.  Moreover,  the  nature  ol  the 
value  added  bv  the  advertising  campaign  selects 
the  customers  who  will  buy  the  brand.  1  he  Lord 
Calverl  "Man  of  Distinction"  campaign,  foi  ex- 
ample, made  that  brand  ol  whiskey  the  favorite 
of  the  Negro  community. 

Since  individuals  ordei  their  lives  on  different 
value  scales,  no  brand  can  hope  via  advertising 
to  win  all  the  customers  in  a  competitive  market. 
This  explains  the  phenomenon  ol  market  satura- 
tion, which  occurs  when  the  great  bulk  of  those 
who  place  high  importance  on  the  particular 
values  added  bv  this  advertising  are  already  pur- 
chasing the  brand.  (This  element  ol  individual 
scales  of  value  also  explains  the  observed  fact 
of  limited  "brand  loyalty.")  And  the  consumer 
savs  that  he  finds  differences  between  identical 
products  which  are  differentlv  advertised  because 
the  advertising  has,  in  fact,  made  them  different. 


is  it  real: 

IN  PART,  the  words  "added  value"  are 
merely  another,  more  accurate  and  more  use- 
ful, way  of  expressing  the  thought  behind  the 
phrase  "creating  a  want."  The  value  ol  a  product 
to  a  consumer  lies  in  its  fulfillment  ol  a  par- 
ticular desire:  increased  desire  must  be  reflected 
across  the  equation  mark  by  increased  value. 
The  old  idea  of  created  wants  is  unrealistic, 
however,  because  it  assumes  an  unchanged  prod- 
uct. In  fact,  the  application  of  advertising  to  a 
product  must  to  some  extent  change  the  product. 
It  is  remarkable  how  many  people,  who  readily 
see  that  a  new  package  or  a  new  brand  name 
will  alter  a  product,  fail  to  see  that  advertising 
inevitably  has  a  very  similar  effect. 

Moreover,  the  incomplete  concept  of  created 
wants  produces  much  silliness  of  argument  by 
advertising's  practitioners  and  its  critics.  Adver- 
tising men,  by  and  large,  are  hypersensitive  and 
overdefensive  about  their  work,  partly  because 
they  see  it  as  "the  creation  of  wants."  It  is  pos- 
sible to  rationalize  want-creating  as  a  socially 
admirable  activity,  but  the  argument  is  a  tedious 
one— and  subject  at  several  points  to  a  devastat- 
ing reply  which,  in  Bernard  Shaw's  phrase, 
"expresses   itself    through    a    symbol    formed    by 


WHAT     IS     ADVERTISING     GOOD     FOR? 


29 


.  .  .  creation  of  wants  .  .  . 

applying  the  thumb  to  the  tip  of  the  nose  and 
throwing  the  extended  fingers  into  graceful 
action."  Realization  within  the  trade  that  adver- 
tising works  on  the  product,  rather  than  working 
over  the  consumer,  might  make  the  advertising 
community  less  guilt-ridden  and  contentious.  At 
the  same  time,  a  better  understanding  of  what 
advertising  really  does  might  quiet  the  appar- 
ently unceasing  attacks  on  the  industry  for  its 
alleged  fraud,  deceit,  and  "hidden  persuasion." 

The  notion  that  advertising  can  somehow 
"manipulate"  people  into  buying  products  which 
they  should  not  buy  is  both  arrogant  and  naive. 
It  has  been  proved  false  repeatedly  by  advertis- 
ing's inability  to  keep  an  inferior  product  afloat, 
or  to  sell  against  primary  trends.  When  an  adver- 
tising campaign  is  highly  successful,  it  will  almost 
always  be  found  that  the  wagon  has  been  hooked 
onto  a  strong  tendency  which  existed  before  the 
ads  were  written.  It  is  not  a  difference  in  quality 
or  amount  of  advertising  that  makes  campaigns 
for  filter  cigarettes  successful,  while  campaigns 
for  non-filter  cigarettes  fail;  lung  cancer  is  the 
dominant  fact  here,  though  you  would  not 
expect  to  find  so  obscene  an  expression  in  a 
cigarette  ad. 

And  the  consuming  public— whatever  its  fail- 
ings in  the  kingdom  of  abstract  ideas— is  usually 
rather  shrewd  in  its  evaluations  of  competing 
products.  The  individual  consumer  appears  to 
make  a  fool  of  himself  when  he  says  that  Brand  A 
"tastes  better"  than  Brand  B,  though  the  two 
are  chemically  identical.  But  his  difficulty  is  in 
expression,  not  perception.  The  superior  value 
which  he  asserts  when  he  says  "Brand  A  tastes 
better"  is  not  a  false  or  even  an  artificial  value, 
just  because  the  assertion  is  false.  Though  he 
cannot  explain  the  reasons,  the  consumer  actually 
does  receive  greater  enjoyment— and  thus  more 
value  for  his  money— when  he  buys  Brand  A. 

Where  techniques  from  the  social  sciences  and 
the  psychological  laboratory  are  used  to  find 
advertising  ideas  (and  the  success  achieved  with 
these  techniques  has  been  by  no  means  so  great 


as  some  propagandists  would  have  you  believe), 
the  case  is  open-and-shut.  If  a  product  satisfies  a 
sublimated  sexual  drive,  and  advertising  can 
enlarge  the  consciousness  of  this  satisfaction,  then 
advertising  has  obviously  heightened  the  value 
of  the  product  to  the  consumer .  If  advertising 
can  convince  a  consumer  that  his  purchase  of  a 
product  will  promote  him  to  the  upper  classes 
(and  he  cares  to  be  ranked  with  the  upper 
classes)  he  will  receive  an  added  value  that  could 
be  described  as  a  thrill.  The  dry-goods  merchant 
who  buys  his  first  Cadillac  gets  a  satisfaction 
which  cannot  be  measured  in  terms  of  the  auto- 
mobile itself.  The  Cadillac  prestige  manufac- 
tured by  advertising  man  James  Adams  is  as 
important  to  him  as  the  Cadillac  horsepower 
manufactured  by  General  Motors. 

Many  will  object  that  the  values  created  by 
advertising  are  "false  values."  But  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  a  value  enjoyed  by  a  consumer  is  unim- 
portant in  the  objective  context  of  getting  and 
spending.  Outside  standards  of  judgment  cannot 
measure  the  reality  of  private  gratifications.  The 
history  of  human  vice  indicates  that  values 
widely  regarded  as  false  will  always  seem  real 
enough  to  command  a  price  in  the  market  place. 
So  the  truth  or  falsity  of  the  values  added  by 
advertising  is  a  question  for  individual  judg- 
ment, a  matter  of  opinion,  rather  than  a  subject 
for  objective  analysis. 


WHY    INTELLECTUALS 
HATE    IT 

AN  D ,  of  course,  there  is  only  one  civilized 
cultural  judgment  on  advertising:  a  rous- 
ing thumbs-down.  The  great  bulk  of  advertising 
is  culturally  repulsive  to  anyone  with  any  de- 
veloped sensitivity.  So  are  most  movies  and 
television  shows,  most  popular  music  and  a  sur- 
prisingly high  proportion  of  published  books. 
When  you  come  right  down  to  it,  there  is  not  a 
hell  of  a  lot  to  be  said  for  most  of  what  appears 
in  the  magazines. 

But  a  sensitive  person  can  easily  avoid  cheap 
movies,  cheap  books,  and  cheap  art,  while  there 
is  scarcely  anyone  outside  the  jails  who  can  avoid 
contact  with  advertising.  By  presenting  the 
intellectual  with  a  more  or  less  accurate  imafje 
of  the  popular  culture,  advertising  earns  his 
enmity  and  calumny.  It  hits  him  where  it  hurts 
worst:  in  his  politically  liberal  and  socially  gen- 
erous outlook— partly  nourished  on  his  avoid- 
ance of  actual  contact  with  popular   taste. 

Successful  advertising,  which  must  create  mass 
sales,  cannot  rise   too  far  above  or  fall   too  far 


30 


II  UPER'S     MAGAZIN  1 


below  the  cultural  level  oi  the  people  at  whom  it 
aims.  Even  il  .m  advertising  man  suspects  thai 
lie  could  win  results  with  a  more  tasteful  ad  or 
television  program,  he  is  restrained  l>\  the  fact 
thai  he  is  spending  someone  else's  money.  1 1 1- 
ina\  iisk  .1  new  approach  iii  an  advertising 
theme;  but  he  cannoi  be  asked  i<>  experimeni 
with  cultural  standards  which  may  cut  him  ofl 
from  his  client's  market. 

Though  mosi  advertising  must  retain  the 
cultural  values  of  its  audience,  advertising  can 
and  does  work  small  changes  in  public  taste.  On 
balance,  these  changes  arc  probably  in  the  direc- 
tion of  increased  sensitivity.  Advertising  copy 
and  headlines  are  probably  negative  forces, 
helping  out  with  the  general  debasement  of 
the  language.  Advertising  requires  extreme  sim- 
plification of  complicated  subjects,  and  the  ad- 
vertising writer  must  therefore  stretch  previously 
precise  words  to  cover  large  areas.  But  advertis- 
ing is  a  visual  as  well  as  a  verbal  technique.  The 
firsl  purpose  ol  advertising  art  is  to  catch  the 
attention  ol  the  consumer,  in  such  a  way  that 
he  is  favorably  inclined  toward  the  message.  Gen- 
erally speaking,  originality  in  art  is  more  likely 
to  win  attention  than  the  same  damn  thing  all 
over  again— so  advertising  art  has  kept  within 
reaching  distance  of  advanced  design.  Through 
advertising,  the  public  has  become  familiar  with 
what  sensitive  people  usually  regard  as  "good 
design";  and  familiarity  in  this  area  breeds  ac- 
ceptance. In  the  more  general  sense,  and  on  Us 
own  terms,  advertising  as  a  whole  seeks  to 
heighten  public  sensitivity,  because  a  more  sensi- 
tive perception  will  be  more  likely  to  recognize 
the  values  of  slight  product  differences. 

The  culture  must  be  seen,  of  course,  in  a  wider 
focus  than  mere  aesthetics— and  in  this  more 
general  view  its  horrified  critics  charge  that 
advertising  poisons  the  wells. 

"Advertising  has  concentrated,"  writes  For- 
tune's Daniel  Bell  in  the  New  Leader,  "on  arous- 
ing the  anxieties  and  manipulating  the  fears  of 
consumers  to  coerce  them  into  buying." 

Stripped  of  its  emotional  language,  and  re- 
phrased in  the  terms  of  an  added-value  concept, 
this  argument  means  that  advertising  creates  feel- 
ings of  insecurity  for  the  purely  commercial 
purpose  of  increasing  the  value  of  a  brand.  Re- 
duced to  cases,  the  charge  is  that  Listerine  and 
Colgate  force  people  to  worry  about  mouth  odors 
to  persuade  them  to  use  a  product  which,  it  is 
claimed,  eliminates  bad  breath. 

And  there  is  no  way  around  it:  the  accusation 
is  true.  (Though  it  must  be  said  that  advertising 
has  only  a  relatively  minor  influence  on  funda- 


mental attitudes,  and  cannot  create  a  Eeai  01  an 
anxiet)  not  dread)  present  in  the  consumer— at 
leasl  in  the  latent  form  ol  an  experience  not  fully 
considered— before  he  comes  upon  the  ad.)  Ad- 
vertising  undoubtedly  does  magnify  the  pains  ol 
modern  existence  so  n  can  sell  products  which 

are  supposed  to  soothe  them. 

I  aken  l>\  itself,  this  act  seems  morally  unjusti- 
fiable. Hut  the  product  ven  often  does  assuage 
the  pains— and  it  does  so.  in  those  areas  ol  health 
and  beaut)  where  the  fear  appeals  are  most 
commonly  used,  because  ol  the  power  ol  sugges- 
tion of  the  advertising  itself.  The  poor  old  crock 
who  feels  tired  every  afternoon  at  three,  from  a 
complicated  set  ol  physical  and  psychological 
causes,  ma)  be  peisuacled  to  believe  thai  what 
ails  him   is    I  ireel    Blood.    So  a  dose  of  Geritol, 


.  .  .  feelings  0]  insecurity  .  .  . 

though  his  condition  may  be  such  that  it  does 
him  no  physical  good  at  all,  may  really  cure 
him  of  his  symptoms.  The  girl  who  is  ashamed 
ol  her  pimples  may  bear  them  with  more 
grace  aftei  she  bins  a  product  which  is  adver- 
tised as  the  greatest  pimple  destroyer  in  his- 
tory— even  if  it  is  actually  nothing  more  than 
second-rate  cold  cream,  aerated  (with  lanolin 
added). 

Moreover,  most  of  the  products  advertised 
as  cures  I01  such  ills  do  not  work  merely  psycho- 
logical wonders;  often  they  actually  will  produce 
some  of  the  physical  benefits  claimed. 

In  real  life,  advertising  does  not  plummet  un- 
troubled people  into  a  pit  ol  anxiety,  for  the 
single,  vulgar  goal  of  an  advertiser's  profit.  Ad- 
vertising probably  does  increase  the  number  of 
people  who  feel  some  conscious  concern  about 
their  physical  or  social  failings.  But  it  offers 
to  all  people— both  those  who  felt  the  concern 
before  they  saw  the  advertising  and  those  in 
whom  it  is  newly  aroused— a  solution  (a  guaran- 


WHAT     IS     ADVERTISING     GOOD     FOR? 


31 


teed  solution,  in  the  context  of  the  advertising) 
to  their  troubles.  For  a  considerable  proportion 
of  those  who  try  it,  the  product  actually  is  a  solu- 
tion, and  drinking  it  down  frees  them  of  their 
worries.  Measuring  the  damage  done  to  the 
national  psyche  by  the  additional  fears  created 
by  advertising,  as  against  the  soothing  of  the 
national  psyche  achieved  by  removing  the  same 
fears  from  a  number  of  people  who  previously 
suffered  them,  is  a  task  for  a  subtle  metaphysician 
indeed. 

THE    "CONFORMISTS" 

FINALLY,  there  is  the  relationship  be- 
tween advertising  and  what  a  large  number 
of  people  call  "conformity."  This  relationship  is 
difficult  to  discuss,  because  the  alleged  "con- 
formity," as  a  new  development  in  society,  prob- 
ably does  not  exist  outside  the  imaginations  of 
the  people  who  talk  about  it.  It  is  true,  of  course, 
that  a  large  mass  of  citizens  drawn  at  random 
from  within  a  single  culture  will  have  more 
things  in  common  than  not.  It  is  also  true  that 
modern  communications  have  produced  some 
breaking  down  of  old  and  perhaps  valuable 
regional  distinctions.  And  it  is  true  that  develop- 
ments in  the  past  thirty  years  have  raised  the 
economic  condition  of  the  nation's  lowest  tenth 
and  lowered  that  of  its  highest  tenth;  raised  the 
educational  level  of  the  lowest  tenth  and  lowered 
that  of  the  highest  tenth.  So  the  community 
appears  to  be  more  homogeneous,  from  a  distant 
look.  But  the  same  developments  which  have 
created  the  appearance  of  homogeneity  have  also 
brought  about  an  astonishing  increase  in  the 
variety  of  entertainments,  of  housing  and  fur- 
nishing possibilities,  of  hobbies,  of  consumer 
goods— even  of  intellectual  pursuits,  for  those  so 
minded. 

Actually,  "conformity"  plagues  the  impover- 
ished communities,  where  people  work  to  ex- 
haustion and  have  neither  the  leisure  nor  the 
income  to  express  their  tastes.  A  prosperous 
middle-class  society  may  feel,  more  strongly 
than  a  poor  community,  that  it  does  not  like 
people  who  rock  the  boat— but  within  broad 
limits  its  members  are  free  to  indulge  their  indi- 
viduality as  they  have  never  been  before. 

And  advertising's  contribution  here  is,  on  the 
whole,  to  increase  diversity.  Advertising  lives  by 
the  product  difference,  real  or  asserted— that  is, 
by  appealing  to  different  tastes  in  values.  If 
advertising  looks  like  other  advertising  (as  so 
much  of  it  does)  the  fault  lies  in  the  limited  skill 
of  many  practitioners  (and  in  the  fact  that  ad- 


vertisers, knowing  that  their  competitors  are 
smart,  insist  on  ads  quite  similar  to  the  com- 
petition's). The  purpose  is  not  to  force  anyone 
to  "conform." 

What  lies  behind  the  cry  of  "conformity"  and 
the  accusation  that  advertising  promotes  it  is  the 
deep  disajDpointment  following  upon  the  arrival 
of  the  millennium.  We  have  achieved  the  nine- 
teenth-century dream:  practically  everyone  has 
enough  to  eat  and  decent  clothing;  by  any  stan- 
dards but  our  own  nearly  everyone  is  well 
housed;  the  workday  is  short  and  leisure  is 
ample. 

But  the  millennial  culture  turns  out  not  to  be 
very  interesting:  the  average  man  remains  a 
mediocre  fellow,  and  pleased  with  himself,  to 
boot.  Which  is,  certainly,  well  within  his  rights. 
Perhaps  advertising  ought  to  do  something  for 
the  culture,  but  it  won't;  says  it  can't;  says  it 
shouldn't  be  asked.  In  his  most  defensive  mo- 
ments, the  advertising  man  will  hammer  on  the 
table  and  say  the  majority  must  be  right  to  like 
garbage  because  it  buys  so  much  garbage.  Hold- 
ing up  an  inescapable  mirror  which  reflects  dis- 
appointment, and  refusing  for  reasons  of  trade 
to  comment  on  the  picture  in  the  mirror,  adver- 
tising asks  to  be  disliked  by  that  element  of  the 
community  which  aspires  to  a  higher  culture. 
It  is. 

BUT  dislike  of  advertising,  however  strongly 
felt,  is  no  excuse  for  silly  attacks  on  it.  Like 
the  rest  of  us,  the  advertising  man  does  the  best 
he  can.  He  has  days  when  he  likes  to  regard 
himself  as  a  Machiavellian  figure,  and  for  busi- 
ness reasons  he  has  been  known  to  egg  on  critics 
who  wildly  overestimate  his  power  in  the  com- 
munity. But  he  did  not  create  the  culture  in 
which,  perforce,  he  has  to  work;  not  infrequently, 
he  shares  his  critics'  distaste  for  the  popular, 
adolescent-oriented  aesthetic  scene.  And  he  is 
not  the  only  cobbler  who  has  decided,  at  least 
for  the  time  being,  to  stick  to  his  last. 

In  our  current  economy,  where  personal  sell- 
ing is  clearly  too  expensive  a  way  to  move  the 
necessary  volume  of  goods,  advertising  performs 
a  necessary  function— and  the  more  successful  it 
is,  the  more  prosperous  everyone  will  be.  Seen 
objectively,  the  advertising  man's  work  increases 
the  material  comfort  and  the  sum  of  private 
gratifications  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  The 
values  which  advertising  creates  may  strike  a 
moralist  as  mangy  beasts.  But  moralists  today, 
like  moralists  throughout  history,  must  live 
with  the  fact  that  in  the  dark  and  democratic 
world  of  private  gratification  all   cats  are  gray. 


Owr  DUMB  colkames 


B)    \  Kill  I   It    C.   CLARK  I, 

I  h  mi  i  flgH    l>\     />'"\      l/<  /\  /«■ 

\  c  hhnpunzcc  loai  ncd  to  be  i iiul 

Inn  •  I. H        .  .mil  it  -i  «in    entire!) 
pa    il>li    in  In  i  ill  iiipi  i  .i|n     in  work 
i     Ion-  1 1  <  >  i  <  1 1 1  <  1 1      1 1 1  (i  cleiinei 
i  hi  inn  nickci      . 1 1 1 •  I  i  \  in  bob]     iltci 


II I  I  s  I    i  hough  1 1  an  parti)  inspin  tl  b)  the 
,inii.    o|  i  li/.abelh,  who  is  sill ing  opposite 

1 1 ii   wiih  I ■•  i  lace  cupped  in  hei  feel    She  is  i I 

hi  doing  this,  and   the  eflci  i   is  odd    espei  uilly 
w  In  M  sin    .us  on  In  i  hands  al  I  hi   sanu   i  imc 
Elizabeth    is   .1    sm.ill    monke)    »lm    1  ei  ent l\ 

joined  in)   household  and  has  give 1  a  new 

perspective  on  the  animal  world   She  has  started 

mi   thinking  about  ii Ii    thai  the  othei  crea 

.  who  share  this  planci  with  us  will  play  in 

ill.     sin  in  \     i.l     1  In      1 111  iik      .mil     I     inc. 111    .is    <  11 

workers,  not  merely  .is  pets  01  sources  "I  food 

1 ». iw  11  ilic  i  (  in  111 11  ..   Man  has  doinest i<  ated  ■> 
sin  1 H  is  in" l\    large   nuinbei    ol    animals    ranging 

1 1  ili »gs,  ■  In  1  tabs,  and  falcons  im   li ig,  to 

elephants,  horses,  and  yaks  foi  transport,  Bui 
these  arc  occupations  which  rcquin  little  intel 
ligi  nee  WhIi  model  11  know  Ii  dgc  1  •!  animal 
psychology   ami  conditioned  reflexes,  we  should 

lie  able  i<>  train  some  ol  companions  on  the 

■  I,  .I..    1.  .1  1  Ii  nunc  sn|iliisi  11  ated  tasks, 

in  .in  ngc  when  there  is  so  much  i.ilk  ol  .hud 
niation,  1  liis  1 1 1.1  \  sci  in  .1  backward  step;  but  there 


will  always  be  jobs  which,  though  tedious  and 
unpleasant    perhaps  even  dangerous    are  jo  in* 

1 .. ,    1 1  ,i<    in   mechanize   thai    robots  cannol    pei 
form  1  In  in    \\  1   will  have  to  gi  1  help  from  iomi 

W  III    I  1       1    I   II 

1 1  id  obvious  when  w<  will  lool  foi  it  Oui 
cousins    1  lie    apes    and    monkeys     11      die    onl) 

animal  1  po   1     ;  both  manual  dexterity  and  in- 

ii  |lig<  11. 1     ilic\    have  ahead)    show  n   1  but    1  hey 

can  per f< a  wid<  range  ol  jobs    ivh  11  the)  feel 

hi  1  11  In  Malaya,  man)  people  will  be  surprised 
in  li  .11  n.  1  In  pig  1. nli  ii  in. 11  aciue  has  been  em- 
ployed foi  generations  to  harvest  tin  coconut 
crop  b)  1 1  mil  mi",  1  In  1.1  II  palms  ind  dropping 
ili<  mils  Similai  talents  were  displayed  b)  one 
oi  1  in  few  <  himpanzees  w  ii  h  a  ci  mnn.il  record 
Sou. Hcs.  11. lined  1  •  s  ins  m.isii  1  in  burgle  New 
Yoik  apartments  fifteen  stories  up,  to  the  baffle 

men!   ol    I  lie  1  ml  11  e. 

['here  arc  ven  few  jobs  honest  01  dishonest  - 
I/../  requiring  abstract  thought  which  .1  chimpan- 
zee 1.1  n  noi  he  1 1.1 1  mi  I  in  do  l>\  die  standard 
methods  ol  demonstration  followed  i>\  a  suitable 
reward  (Standard,  com<  to  ilnnk  ol  it,  both  E01 
animals  and  human  beings.)  I  here  is  no  great 
mysten  about  animal  training,  and  certainly  no 
question  <>i  cruelty,  li  requires  .1  thorough 
understanding  ol  die  pupil's  mental  limitations, 
and  enough  patience  to  repeal  an  action  ovet 
and  ovet  again  until  the  animal  ",i.isj>s  what  is 
required  ol  it,  Successful  accomplishment  is 
rewarded  1 » \  food,  though  often  <^<  reward  is 
necessary  rhe  highei  apes  frequentl)  imitate 
humans  jnsi  foi  the  Inn  ol  it;  Captain  Proske 
records  how  Ins  chimpanzee  (  ongo  loved  to  d<> 
|oiis  around  the  house  such  .is  washing,  ironing, 
.ind    dai nine    1  he    1  i"i lies    1  hough    with    more 

(111  llllsl.islll     I  ll.llt     skill. 


OUR     DUMB     COLLEAGUES 


33 


These  modest  beginnings  show  what  can  be 
done  even  today,  with  an  animal  straight  from 
the  jungle1.  However,  no  existing  ape  possesses 
the  docility  and  the  power  of  sustained  attention 
needed  to  make  it  truly  employable.  Intelligence, 
dexterity,  strength— they  are  all  there,  but  relia- 
bility is  still  lacking. 

If  we  tackled  the  problem  of  breeding  for 
brains  with  the  same  enthusiasm  that  has  been 
devoted  to  breeding  dogs  of  surrealist  shapes, 
we  could  eventually  produce  assorted  models  of 
useful  primates  ranging  in  size  from  the  gorilla 
down  to  the  baboon,  each  adapted  for  a  special 
type  of  work.  It  is  not  putting  too  much  strain 
on  the  imagination  to  assume  that  the  geneticists 
could  produce  a  super-ape  able  to  understand 
some  scores  of  words  and  capable  of  being  trained 
for  such  jobs  as  picking  fruit,  cleaning  up  the 
litter  in  the  park,  shoe-shining,  collecting  the 
garbage,  doing  household  chores,  and  even  baby- 
sitting. (Though  I  have  known  some  babies  I 
would  not  care  to  trust  with  a  valuable  ape.) 

Many  jobs,  such  as  street-cleaning  and  the 
more  repetitive  types  of  agricultural  work,  it 
could  do  unsupervised,  though  it  might  need 
protection  from  those  egregious  specimens  of 
Homo  sapiens  who  think  it  amusing  to  tease 
or  bully  anything  they  consider  lower  on  the 
evolutionary  ladder.  For  other  tasks,  such  as 
paper-delivering  and  dock-laboring,  our  man- 
ape  would  have  to  work  under  human  overseers; 
and  incidentally  I  would  love  to  see  the  finale  of 
a    twenty-first-century   "On   the   Waterfront"   in 


which  the  honest  but  hairy  hero  drums  on  his 
chest  after— literally— taking  the  wicked  labor 
leader  apart. 

Once  a  supply  of  non-human  workers  became 
available,  a  whole  range  of  low  IQ  jobs  could 
be  thankfully  relinquished  by  mankind,  to  its 
great  mental  and  physical  advantage.  What  is 
more,  one  of  the  problems  which  has  plagued  so 
many  fictional  Utopias  would  be  avoided;  there 
would  be  none  of  the  degradingly  sub-human 
"Epsilons"  of  Huxley's  Brave  New  World  to  act 
as  a  permanent  reproach  to  society.  For  there  is 
a  profound  moral  difference  between  breeding 
sub-men  and  super-apes,  even  if  the  end  products 
may  be  much  the  same.  The  first  would  intro- 
duce a  form  of  slavery;  the  second  would  be  a 
biological  triumph  which  could  be  of  benefit  to 
both  men  and  animals. 

But  I  must  come  back  in  a  hurry  from  these 
dreams  of  a  future  society.  Elizabeth  has  just 
managed  to  open  the  garage  door  and  is  trying 
to  start  the  car.  And  that  will  never  do,  for  she 
hasn't  got  her  driving  license  yet. 


The  first  of  two  articles  by 
GEORGE   F.   KENNAN 

Former  Ambassador  to  Moscow  and  Former 
Chief  of  the  State  Department's 
Policy  Planning  >  Division 


A  CHANCE  TO  WITHDRAW 
OUR  TROOPS  IN  EUROPE 


A  proposal  for  pulling  back  both  American 

and^  Russian  armies  .  .  .  exploring  a  new  way 

to  unify  Germany  .  .  .  lessening  the 

danger  of  atomic  war  .  .  .  and  for  a  better 

defense  of  the  West  at  a  lower  cost. 

TH  E  time  has  come,  it  seems  to  me,  for  a 
fresh  examination  of  the  main  issues  which 
lie  between  the  Soviet  Union  and  the  West.  It  is 
barely  possible  we  might  now  find  that  an  ap- 
proach to  a  settlement— or  at  least  to  a  more  en- 
durable situation— is  not  so  hopeless  as  it  has 
long  seemed  to  be. 

These  issues  fall  into  two  categories: 

(1)  The  basic  ones,  by  which  I  mean  disagree- 
ments over  such  things  as  frontiers  and  the 
political  control  of  territory. 

(2)  The  secondary  ones  flowing  from  the  mili- 
tary rivalry  which  has  grown  up  between  NATO 
and  the  Soviet  bloc. 

The  basic  issues  of  genuine  gravity  arose  di- 
rectly from  the  manner  in  which  World  War  II 
was  allowed  to  come  to  an  end.  The  authority 
of  a  United  German  government  was  then  ex- 
punged within  Germany  itself  and  throughout 
large  areas  of  Eastern  Europe;  and  the  armies  of 
the  Soviet  Union  and  the  Western  Democracies 
met  in  the  middle  of  this  territory  and  took  con- 
trol of  it,  before  there  was  any  adequate  agree- 
ment on  its  future  permanent  status. 

This  was,  of  course,  the  combined  result  of  the 


unconditional  surrender  policy,  which  relieved 
the  Germans  of  all  responsibility  for  the  future 
status  of  this  area,  and  the  failure  of  the  Allied 
governments  to  arrive  at  any  realistic  understand- 
ings among  themselves  about  it  while  the  war 
was  on.  Since  it  has  not  been  possible  to  reach 
such  understandings  subsequently,  except  in  the 
case  of  Austria,  the  provisorium  flowing  from 
these  circumstances  has  endured.  It  is  this  that 
we  are  faced  with  today. 

The  difficulty  obviously  breaks  down  into  two 
parts:  the  satellite  area  and  Germany. 

In  the  past  three  or  four  years,  the  Moscow 
leaders  have  made  an  attempt  to  undo  some  of 
the  harm  that  Stalin  had  clone  in  the  satellites 
with  his  policies  of  ruthless  political  oppression 
and  economic  exploitation.  The  first  effect  of 
this  relaxation— shown  in  the  disorders  in  Eastern 
Germany  and  Poland  and  later  in  Hungary- 
was  not  to  reconcile  people  to  the  fact  of  Soviet 
rule  but  rather  to  reveal  the  real  depths  of  their 
restlessness  and  the  extent  to  which  the  postwar 
arrangements  had  outworn  whatever  usefulness 
they  might  once  have  had.  The  Soviet  leaders, 
startled  and  alarmed  by  these  revelations,  have 
now  seen  no  alternative,  in  the  interests  of  their 
own  political  and  military  security,  but  to  re- 
impose  sharp  limits  to  the  movement  for  greater 
independence  in  these  countries,  and  to  rely  for 
the  enforcement  of  these  restrictions  on  the 
naked  use  or  presence  of  their  own  troops. 

The  result  has  been,  as  we  all  know,  the  crea- 
tion  of  an   extremely   precarious   situation— un- 

Copyright  ©  1957,  1958  by  George  F.  Kennan 


CHANCE  TO  WITHDRAW  OUR  TROOPS  IN  EUROPE 


35 


satisfactory  from  everyone's  standpoint.  The 
state  of  the  satellite  area  today,  and  particularly 
of  Poland,  is  neither  fish  nor  fowl,  neither  com- 
plete Stalinist  domination  nor  real  independence. 
Things  cannot  be  expected  to  remain  this  way 
for  long.  There  must  either  be  further  violent 
efforts  by  people  in  that  area  to  take  things  into 
their  own  hands  and  to  achieve  independence 
by  their  own  means,  or  there  must  be  the  begin- 
ning of  some  process  of  real  adjustment  to  the 
fact  of  Soviet  domination. 

In  the  first  of  these  contingencies,  we  in  the 
West  could  easily  be  placed  once  more  before 
the  dilemma  which  faced  us  last  year  at  the  time 
of  the  Hungarian  uprising;  and  anyone  who  has 
the  faintest  concern  for  the  stability  of  the  world 
must  fervently  pray  that   this  will  not  happen. 

As  for  the  second  alternative,  which  at  this 
moment  seems  to  be  the  more  likely  of  the  two, 
it  seems  no  less  appalling.  If  things  go  on  as  they 
are  today,  there  will  simply  have  to  be  some  sort 
of  adjustment  on  the  part  of  the  peoples  of 
Eastern  Europe,  even  if  it  is  one  that  takes  the 
form  of  general  despair,  apathy,  demoralization, 
and  the  deepest  sort  of  disillusionment  with  the 
West.  The  failure  of  the  recent  popular  upris- 
ings to  shake  the  Soviet  military  domination  has 
now  produced  a  state  of  bitter  and  dangerous 
despondency  throughout  large  parts  of  Eastern 
Europe.  If  the  taste  or  even  the  hope  for  inde- 
pendence once  dies  out  in  the  hearts  of  these 
peoples,  then  there  will  be  no  recovering  it;  then 
Moscow's  victory  will  be  complete. 

WILL  THE  RUSSIANS 
PULL  BACK? 

IC  A  N  conceive  of  no  escape  from  this  dil- 
emma that  would  not  involve  the  early  de- 
parture of  Soviet  troops  from  the  satellite  coun- 
tries. Only  when  the  troops  are  gone  will  there 
be  possibilities  for  the  evolution  of  these  nations 
toward  institutions  and  social  systems  most  suit- 
ed to  their  needs;  and  what  these  institutions 
and  systems  might  then  be,  is  something  about 
which  I  think  we  in  the  West  can  afford  to  be 
very  relaxed.  If  Socialism  is  what  these  people 
want  and  need,  so  be  it;  but  let  it  by  all  means 
be  their  own  choice. 

It  is  plain  that  there  can  be  no  Soviet  military 
withdrawal  from  Eastern  Europe  unless  this  en- 
tire area  can  in  some  way  be  removed  as  an 
object  in  the  military  rivalry  of  the  Great  Pow- 
ers. But  this  at  once  involves  the  German  prob- 
lem because  it  implies  the  withdrawal  of  Soviet 
forces  from  Eastern  Germany,  and— so  long  as 


American  and  other  Western  forces  remain  in 
Western  Germany— the  Russians  must  view  their 
problem  in  Eastern  Europe  in  direct  relation  to 
the  over-all  military  equation  between  Russia 
and  the  West.  Any  solution  of  the  problem  of 
the  satellite  area  is  thus  dependent  on  a  solution 
of  the  German  problem  itself. 

This  being  the  case,  I  think  we  cannot  scrutin- 
ize too  closely  or  too  frequently  in  the  light  of 
the  developing  situation  both  in  Europe  and  in 
the  world  at  large,  the  position  the  Western 
governments  have  taken  on  Germany. 

The  West  has  insisted,  and  with  very  good 
reason,  that  the  modalities  of  German  unifica- 
tion, as  a  domestic  program,  must  flow  from  the 
will  of  the  German  people,  expressed  in  free 
elections.  But  the  West  has  gone  farther  than 
that.  It  has  also  insisted  that  no  restrictions 
whatsoever  must  be  placed  in  advance  on  the 
freedom  of  a  future  all-German  government  to 
determine  its  own  international  orientation  and 
to  incur  military  obligations  to  other  states. 
Specifically,  the  Western  governments  have  in- 
sisted that  such  an  all-German  government  must 
be  entirely  free  to  continue  to  adhere  to  the 
NATO  Pact,  as  the  German  Federal  Republic 
does  today;  and  it  is  taken  everywhere  as  a 
foregone  conclusion  that  an  all-German  govern- 
ment would  do  just  that. 

If  a  future  united  Germany  should  choose  to 
adhere  to  NATO,  what  would  happen  then  to 
the  garrisons  of  the  various  allied  powers  now 
stationed  on  German  soil?  The  Western  position 
says  nothing  specific  about  this.  But  while  Brit- 
ish, French,  and  American  forces  would  presum- 
ably remain  in  Germany  under  the  framework 
of  the  NATO  system,  one  must  assume  that 
those  of  the  Soviet  Union  would  be  expected  to 
depart.  If  this  is  so,  then  Moscow  is  really  being 
asked  to  abandon— as  part  of  an  agreement  on 
German  unification— the  military  and  political 
bastion  in  Central  Europe  which  it  won  by  its 
military  effort  frqm  1941  to  1945,  and  to  do  this 
without  any  compensatory  withdrawal  of  Amer- 
ican armed  power  from  the  heart  of  the  Conti- 
nent. 

This  is  something  the  Soviet  government  is 
most  unlikely  to  accept,  if  only  for  reasons  of 
what  it  will  regard  as  its  own  political  security 
at  home  and  abroad.  It  will  be  hard  enough, 
even  in  the  best  of  circumstances,  for  Moscow 
ever  to  extract  itself  from  its  present  abnormal 
involvements  in  Eastern  Europe  without  this 
having  repercussions  on  its  political  system.  It 
cannot,  realistically,  be  asked— if  agreement  is 
wanted— to  take  this  step  in  any  manner  that 


36 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


would  seriously  jeopardize  its  prestige.  The  mere 
fact  of  Soviet  withdrawal,  without  any  compen- 
sator) withdrawal  on  the  Western  side,  would 
create  the  general  impression  of  a  deleat  for 
Soviet  polity  in   Eastern  and  Centra]    Europe. 

The  Soviet  leaders  will  therefore  see  in  these 
present  Western  proposals  a  demand  for  some- 
thing in  the  nature  ol  an  unconditional  sur- 
render of  the  Soviet  interest  in  the  German 
question  generally;  and  if  the)  ever  should  be  so 
weak  as  to  have  no  choice  but  to  quit  Germany 
on  these  terms,  ii  would  scarcely  take  an  agree- 
ment with  the  Western  Powers  to  enable  them 
to  do  so.  So  long,  therefore,  as  it  remains  the 
Western  position  that  the  hands  of  a  future  all- 
German  government  must  not  he  in  any  way 
tied,  I  see  little  hope  for  any  removal  of  the 
division  of  Germany  at  all— not,  by  the  same 
token,  of  the  removal  of  the  division  of  Europe. 

DANGEROUS     EXPECTATIONS 

THERE  are  those  in  our  Western  camp,  I 
know,  who  find  in  this  state  of  affairs  no 
great  cause  for  alarm.  A  divided  Germany  seems, 
for  the  moment,  to  he  less  of  a  problem  to  them 
than  was  the  united  Germany  ol  recent  memory. 
I  In -v  regard  the  continued  presence  of  American 
forces  in  Germany  as  an  indispensable  pledge 
of  American  military  interest  in  the  Continent, 
and  they  tremble  at  the  thought  that  this  pledge 
should  ever  be  absent.  It  is  agreeable  to  them 
that  America,  by  assuming  this  particular  burden 
and  bearing  it  indefinitely,  should  relieve  West- 
ern Europe  of  the  necessity  of  coming  to  grips 
itself  with  the  German  question. 

This  view  is  understandable  in  its  way.  There 
was  a  time,  in  the  immediate  postwar  period, 
when  it  was  largely  justified.  But  there  is  danger 
in  permitting  it  to  harden  into  a  permanent  atti- 
tude. It  expects  too  much,  and  for  too  long  a 
time,  of  the  United  States,  which  is  not  a  Euro- 
pean power.  It  does  less  than  justice  to  the 
strength  and  the  abilities  of  the  Europeans  them- 
selves. It  leaves  unsolved  the  extremely  precari- 
ous and  unsound  arrangements  which  now  gov- 
ern the  status  of  Berlin— the  least  disturbance  of 
which  could  easily  produce  a  new  world  crisis. 
It  takes  no  account  of  the  present  dangerous 
situation  in  the  satellite  area.  It  renders  perma- 
nent what  was  meant  to  be  temporary.  It  as- 
signs half  of  Europe,  by  implication,  to  the 
Russians. 

Let  me  stress  particularly  this  question  of  Ber- 
lin. There  is  a  stubborn  tendency  in  England 
and  the  U.  S.  to  forget  the  Berlin  situation  so 


long  as  it  gives  us  no  trouble  and  to  assume  that 
everything  will  somehow-  work  out  for  the  best. 
May  I  point  out  that  the  Western  position  in 
Bei  I  in  is  by  no  means  a  sound  or  safe  one;  and 
it  is  being  rendered  daily  more  uncertain  by  the 
ominous  tendency  of  the  Soviet  government  to 
thrust  forward  the  last  German  regime  as  its 
spokesman  in  these  matteis.  Moscow's  purpose 
in  this  maneuver  is  obviously  to  divest  itself  of 
responsibility  lor  the  future  development  of  the 
Berlin  situation.  It  hopes  by  this  means  to  place 
itsell  in  a  position  where  it  can  remain  serenely 
aloof  while  the  East  German  regime  proceeds  to 
make  the  Western  position  in  the  city  an  impos- 
sible one.   This  is  a  sure  portent  of  trouble. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  wholly  wrong  to  sug- 
gest that  it  is  only  the  uncertainty  of  the  West- 
ern position  about  the  future  of  the  garrisons  in 
Germany  that  stands  in  the  way  of  a  settlement. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  any  acceptable  arrangement 
lot  German  unification  would  be  an  extremely 
difficult  thing  to  achieve  in  any  case.  It  took  ten 
years  to  negotiate  a  similar  settlement  for  Aus- 
tria. The  negotiation  of  a  German  settlement 
might  also  take  years,  in  the  best  of  circum- 
stances. But  I  think  we  are  justified  in  assuming 
that  it  is  this  question  of  the  indefinite  retention 
of  the  American  and  other  Western  garrisons  on 
German  soil  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  diffi- 
culty; and  until  greater  clarity  is  achieved  about 
tli is  point,  there  can  be  no  proper  beginning. 

It  will  at  once  be  held  against  what  I  have  said 
that  Moscow  itself  does  not  today  want  German 
unification  on  any  terms.  Perhaps  so.  Certainly 
in  recent  months  there  have  been  no  signs  of 
enthusiasm  in  Moscow  for  any  settlement  of  this 
sort.  But  how  much  of  this  lack  of  enthusiasm 
is  resignation  in  the  face  of  the  Western  position, 
we  do  not  know.  Until  we  stop  pushing  the 
Kremlin  against  a  closed  door,  we  shall  never 
learn  whether  it  would  be  prepared  to  go 
through  an  open  one. 

We  must  also  bear  in  mind  that  things  change 
from  time  to  time  in  Moscow,  just  as  they  do 
here  in  the  West.  If  the  disposition  to  conclude 
a  German  settlement  does  not  exist  today  in 
Moscow,  our  positions  should  at  least  be  such  as 
to  give  promise  of  agreement  when  and  if  this 
attitude  changes. 

Finally,  the  question  is  not  just  whether  Mos- 
cow, as  people  say,  "wants"  German  unification. 
It  is  a  question  of  whether  Moscow  could  afford 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  it  if  there  were  a  real  pos- 
sibility for  a  general  evacuation  of  Europe. 
Gomulka  not  long  ago  promised  the  Polish  peo- 
ple that  the  day  the  Americans  leave  Germany, 


CHANCE  TO  WITHDRAW  OUR  TROOPS  IN  EUROPE 


37 


he  will  take  up  with  the  Soviet  government  the 
question  of  the  departure  of  the  Soviet  forces 
from  Poland.  And  it  is  quite  clear  that  as  Poland 
goes,  in  this  respect,  so  goes  the  rest  of  the  satel- 
lite area.  Khrushchev  has  not  specifically  de- 
murred at  Gomulka's  position;  on  the  contrary, 
he  has,  in  fact,  even  murmured  things  himself, 
from  time  to  time,  about  a  possible  mutual  with- 
drawal of  forces,  although  he  has  intimated  that 
the  price  of  a  Soviet  withdrawal  might  be  some- 
what higher  than  what  Gomulka  implied. 

In  any  case,  the  interest  of  the  satellite  govern- 
ments in  a  general  evacuation  of  Germany  is 
perfectly  clear.  If,  therefore,  a  more  promising 
Western  position  would  not  assure  agreement  at 
this  time,  it  would  at  least  serve  to  put  a  greater 
strain  on  Moscow's  position,  and  to  shift  clearly 
and  definitely  to  the  Soviet  side  the  onus  of  de- 
laying a  reasonable  European  settlement. 

AN     AMERICAN     WITHDRAWAL? 

ARE  there,  then,  points  at  which  the 
Western  position  could  safely  be  im- 
proved? It  is  hard  for  an  outsider  to  answer  to 
such  a  question  in  this  rapidly-moving  time,  f 
can  only  say  that  there  are  two  features  of  our 
present  thinking  which,  in  my  opinion,  might 
well  undergo  particular  re-examination. 

I  wonder,  in  the  first  place,  whether  it  is  actu- 
ally politic  and  realistic  to  insist  that  a  future  all- 
German  government  must  be  entirely  free  to 
determine  Germany's  military  orientation  and 
obligations,  and  that  the  victor  powers  of  the  re- 
cent war  must  not  in  any  way  prejudice  that  free- 
dom by  any  agreement  among  themselves.  This 
is  outwardly  a  very  appealing  position.  It  grati- 
fies the  Western  attachment  to  the  principle  of 
national  self-expression.  It  is,  for  obvious  rea- 
sons, a  position  no  German  politician  can  lightly 
oppose.    But  is  it  sound,  and  is  it  constructive? 

A  peace  treaty  has  not  yet  been  concluded. 
The  powers  of  the  victors  have  not  yet  formally 
lapsed  in  Germany.  Might  it  not  just  be  that  the 
only  politically  feasible  road  to  unification  and 
independence  for  Germany  should  lie  precisely 
through  her  acceptance  of  certain  restraints  on 
freedom  to  shape  her  future  military  position  in 
Europe?  And,  if  so,  is  it  not  just  a  bit  quixotic 
to  cling,  in  the  name  of  the  principle  of  German 
freedom  and  independence,  to  a  position  which 
implies  the  sacrifice  of  all  freedom  and  all  inde- 
pendence for  many  millions  of  East  Germans, 
for  an  indefinite  time?  No  useful  purpose  is  go- 
ing to  be  served  by  the  quest  for  perfect  solu- 
tions.  The  unlocking  of  the  European  tangle  is 


not  to  be  achieved  except  at  some  sort  of  a  price. 
Is  there  not— in  this  insistence  that  the  hands  of 
a  future  German  government  must  not  be  in  any 
way  tied— an  evasion  of  the  real  responsibility  of 
the  victor  powers? 

The  second  element  of  Western  thinking  that 
might  well  stand  further  examination  is  the  com- 
mon assumption  that  the  Western  powers  would 
be  placed  at  a  hopeless  military  disadvantage  if 
there  were  to  be  any  mutual  withdrawal. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  discuss  this  ques- 
tion in  specific  terms  unless  one  knows  just  what 
sort  of  withdrawal  is  envisaged— from  where  and 
to  where,  and  by  whom  and  when.  Here,  as  is 
frequently  forgotten,  there  are  many  possible 
combinations;  and  I  am  hot  at  all  sure  that  all 
of  these  have  really  been  seriously  explored. 

But  beyond  this,  I  have  the  impression  that 
our  calculations  continue  to  rest  on  certain  ques- 
tionable assumptions  and  habits  of  thought: 

1)  an  overrating  of  the  likelihood  of  a  Soviet 
effort  to  invade  Western  Europe; 

(2)  an  exaggeration  of  the  value  of  the  satel- 
lite armies  as  possible  instruments  of  a  Soviet 
offensive  policy; 

(3)  a  failure  to  take  into  account  all  the  impli- 
cations of  the  ballistic  missile;  and 

(4)  a  serious  underestimation  of  the  advan- 
tages to  Western  security  to  be  derived  from  a 
Soviet  military  withdrawal. 

THE     YOUNG     GERMANS 

ON  E  of  the  arguments  most  frequently 
heard  in  opposition  to  the  introduction 
of  any  greater  flexibility  into  the  Western  posi- 
tion in  Germany  is  that  "you  can't  trust  the  Ger- 
mans." It  is  therefore  better,  people  say,  that 
Germany  should  be  held  divided  and  in  part 
dependent  on  the  West,  than  that  the  Germans 
should  once  again  be  permitted  independence  of 
action  as  a  nation. 

I  cannot  share  this  opinion.  Germany  is  in  a 
state  of  great  transition,  and  one  can  easily  find, 
within  its  changing  scene,  anything  one  seeks.  It 
is  true  that  many  of  the  older  generation  are 
not  likely  ever  to  recover  entirely  from  the 
trauma  of  the  past;  they  tend  to  be  twisted  peo- 
ple in  one  way  or  another,  which  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  that  they  are  still  Nazis.  But  I  have 
seen,  as  an  academic  lecturer,  whose  own  educa- 
tion took  place  partly  in  Germany,  a  bit  of  the 
younger  Germany;  and  I  am  convinced  that 
these  young  people— troubled,  bewildered,  un- 
supported at  this  time  by  any  firm  tradition  from 
their  own  national  past— will  not  fail  to  respond 


38 


HARPER'S     MAGAZ1M 


to  am  Western  .i|>|>cil  thai  carries  the  ring  <>l 
real  vision,  of  conviction,  and  ol  seriousness  of 
purpose.  The  youngei  generation  i>l  Germans 
are  more  threatened  today  l>\  the  inroads  ol  a 
pervasive,  cynical  materialism  than  the)  are  l>\ 
any  extreme  nationalistic  tendencies:  and  it  is 
precisely  here,  in  combating  i his  materialism, 
that  we  in  the  West  have  u, i \ c ■  1 1  them,  1  Eear, 
little  help  or  inspiration.  To  stake  our  luture 
on  tliis  youngei  German)  is  admittedly  to  take 
a  chance— but  I  can  think  ol  no  greater  risk  than 
the  trend  toward  nuclear  war  on  which  we  are 
all  now  being  carried. 

If  Germany  cannot  be  accorded  reasonable 
confidence  in  these  coming  years,  then  I  know 
of  no  promising  solution  to  the  entire  problem 
of  Europe.  If  we  are  going  to  make  so  negative 
and  so  hopeless  an  assumption,  let  us  be  terribly, 
terribly  sure  that  our  judgment  is  drawn  not 
from  the  memories  and  emotions  of  the  past  but 
from   sober  attention   to   present   realities. 

THE    SUICIDAL    WEAPON 

THESE  observations  naturally  bring  up 
the  military  aspect  of  our  conflict  with 
Soviet  power.  Never  in  history  have  nations  been 
faced  with  a  danger  greater  than  that  which  now 
confronts  us  in  the  form  of  the  atomic  weapons 
race.  Except  in  instances  where  there  was  a  pos- 
sibility of  complete  genocide,  past  dangers  have 
generally  threatened  only  the  existing  genera- 
tion. Today  it  is  everything  which  is  at  stake— 
the  kindliness  of  our  natural  environment  to  the 
human  experience,  the  genetic  composition  of 
the  race,  the  possibilities  of  health  and  life  for 
future  generations. 

Not  only  is  this  danger  terrible,  but  it  is  im- 
mediate. Efforts  toward  composition  of  major 
political  differences  between  the  Russians  and 
ourselves  have  been  practically  abandoned.  Be- 
lief in  the  inevitability  of  war— itself  the  worst 
disservice  to  peace— has  grown  unchecked.  We 
have  a  world  order  marked  by  extreme  instabil- 
ity. In  the  Middle  East  alone,  for  example,  we 
have  a  situation  where  any  disturbance  could 
now  easily  involve  us  all  in  an  all-out  war. 

To  me  it  is  a  source  of  amazement  that  there 
are  people  who  still  see  the  escape  from  this 
danger  in  our  continued  multiplication  of  the 
destructiveness  and  speed  of  delivery  of  the 
major  atomic  weapons.  These  people  seem  un- 
able to  wean  themselves  from  the  belief  that  if 
the  Russians  gain  the  slightest  edge  in  the  ca- 
pacity to  wreak  massive  destruction  at  long 
range,   they  will  immediately  use  it— regardless 


ill  Din  (.i|).uil\  lot  retaliation— win  leas,  il  we  can 
only  contrive  to  get  a  mn  bit  ahead  ol  the  Rus- 
sians, we  shall  in  some  \\.i\  have  won.  our  sal- 
vation will  be  assured;  the  load  will  then  lie 
paved  for  a  settlement  on  our  own  terms.  This 
cast  of  thought  seems  to  have  been  much  en- 
couraged, in  the  I  .  S.  at  least,  by  the  shock  of 
tlie  launching  ol   the  Russian  earth  satellites. 

I  scarcely  need  say  that  I  see  no  grounds  what- 
soever in  this  approach.  The  hydrogen  bomb, 
admittedly,  has  a  certain  sorry  value  to  us  today 
as  a  deterrent.  When  I  say  this,  I  probably  do 
not  mean  exactly  what  many  other  people  mean 
when  they  say  it.  1  have  never  thought  that  the 
Soviet  government  wanted  a  general  world  war 
at  any  time  since  1945,  or  that  it  would  have 
been  inclined,  for  any  rational  political  reason, 
to  inaugurate  such  a  war,  even  had  the  atomic 
weapon  never  been  invented.  I  do  not  believe, 
in  other  words,  that  it  was  our  possession  of  the 
atomic  bomb  which  prevented  the  Russians  from 
overrunning  Europe  in  1948  or  at  any  other  time. 
In  this  I  have  disagreed  with  some  very  impor- 
tant people. 

But  now  that  the  capacity  to  inflict  this  fear- 
ful destruction  is  mutual,  and  now  that  this 
premium  lias  been  placed  on  the  element  of 
surprise,  I  am  prepared  to  concede  that  the 
atomic  deterrent  has  its  value  as  a  stabilizing 
factor  until  we  can  evolve  some  better  means 
of  protection.  And  so  long  as  we  are  obliged 
to  hold  it  as  a  deterrent,  we  must  obvi- 
ously see  to  it  that  it  is  in  every  way  adequate 
to  that  purpose— in  destructiveness,  in  speed  of 
delivery,  in  security  against  a  sudden  preventive 
blow,  and  in  the  alertness  of  those  who  control 
its  employment.  But  I  can  see  no  reason  why  we 
should  indulge  ourselves  in  the  belief  that  the 
strategic  atomic  weapon  can  be  anything  more 
than  a  temporary  and  regrettable  expedient, 
tiding  us  over  a  dangerous  moment. 

As  for  these  various  frantic  schemes  for  de- 
fense against  atomic  attack,  I  can  see  no  grounds 
whatsoever  for  confidence  in  them.  I  do  not 
trust  the  calculations  on  which  they  are  based. 
War  has  always  been  an  uncertain  exercise,  in 
which  the  best-laid  plans  are  frequently  con- 
founded. Today  the  variables  and  unknowns  in 
these  calculations  are  greater  than  ever  before. 
I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  human  mind  or 
group  of  human  minds  or  any  calculating  ma- 
chine anywhere  in  the  world  which  can  predict 
with  accuracy  what  would  happen  if  these 
weapons  should  begin  to  be  used  or  which  could 
devise  realistic  defenses  against  them. 

But  beyond  this,  what  sort  of  a  life  is  it  to 


CHANCE  TO  WITHDRAW  OUR  TROOPS  IN  EUROPE 


39 


which  these  devotees  of  the  weapons  race  would 
see  us  condemned?  The  technological  realities 
of  this  competition  are  constantly  changing 
from  month  to  month  and  from  year  to  year. 
Are  we  to  flee  like  haunted  creatures  from  one 
defensive  device  to  another,  each  more  costly 
and  humiliating  than  the  one  before,  cowering 
underground  one  day,  breaking  up  our  cities  the 
next,  attempting  to  surround  ourselves  with 
elaborate  electronic  shields  on  the  third,  con- 
cerned only  to  prolong  the  length  of  our  lives 
while  sacrificing  all  the  values  for  which  it  might 
be  worthwhile  to  live  at  all?  If  I  thought  that 
this  was  the  best  the  future  held  for  us,  I  should 
be  tempted  to  join  those  who  say,  "Let  us  divest 
ourselves  of  this  weapon  altogether;  let  us  stake 
our  safety  on  God's  grace  and  our  own  good 
consciences  and  on  that  measure  of  common 
sense  and  humanity  which  even  our  adversaries 
possess;  but  then  let  us  at  least  walk  like  men, 
with  our  heads  up,  so  long  as  we  are  permitted  to 
walk  at  all." 

The  beginning  of  understanding  rests,  in  this 
appalling  problem,  with  the  recognition  that  the 
weapon  of  mass  destruction  is  a  sterile  and  hope- 
less weapon  which  may  for  a  time  serve  as  an 
answer  of  sorts  to  itself,  as  an  uncertain  sort  of  a 
shield  against  utter  cataclysm,  but  which  cannot 
in  any  way  serve  the  purposes  of  a  constructive 
and  hopeful  foreign  policy.  The  true  end  of 
political  action  is,  after  all,  to  effect  the  deeper 
convictions  of  men;  this  the  A-bomb  cannot  do. 
The  suicidal  nature  of  this  weapon  renders  it 
unsuitable  both  as  a  sanction  of  diplomacy  and 
as  the  basis  of  an  alliance.  There  can  be  no 
coherent  relations  between  such  a  weapon  and 
the  normal  objects  of  national  policy.  A  defense 
posture  built  around  a  weapon  suicidal  in  its 
implications  can  serve  in  the  long  run  only  to 
paralyze  national  policy,  to  undermine  alliances, 
and  to  drive  everyone  deeper  and  deeper  into 
the  hopeless  exertions  of  the  weapons  race. 

This  fact  is  in  no  way  affected  by  the  Soviet 
earth  satellite,  nor  will  it  be  affected  if  we  launch 
a  satellite  ourselves. 


LIMITED    WAR 

BU  T  even  among  those  who  would  go  along 
with  all  that  I  have  just  said,  there  have 
recently  been  other  tendencies  of  thought  with 
which  I  also  find  myself  in  respectful  but  earnest 
disagreement.  I  have  in  mind  here,  in  particular, 
the  belief  that  the  so-called  tactical  atomic 
weapon— the  atomic  weapon  designed,  that  is,  to 
be    used    at    relatively    short-range    against    the 


armed  forces  of  the  adversary,  rather  than  at 
long  range  and  against  his  homeland— provides  a 
suitable  escape  from  the  sterility  of  any  military 
doctrine  based  on  the  long-range  weapon  of  mass 
destruction. 

Let  me  explain  what  I  mean.  A  number  of 
thoughtful  people,  recognizing  the  bankruptcy  of 
the  hydrogen  bomb  and  the  long-range  missile 
as  the  bases  for  a  defense  policy,  have  pleaded 
for  the  simultaneous  cultivation  of  other  and 
more  discriminate  forms  of  military  strength, 
and  ones  that  could  conceivably  be  used  for  some 
worthwhile  limited  national  objective,  and  with- 
out suicidal  effect.  Some  have  advocated  a  policy 
of  what  they  call  graduated  deterrents.  Others 
have  chosen  to  speak  of  the  cultivation  of  the 
capacity  for  the  waging  of  limited  war,  by  which 
they  mean  a  war  limited  both  in  the  scope  of  its 
objects  and  in  the  destructiveness  of  the  weapons 
to  be  employed.  In  both  instances  what  they 
have  had  in  mind  was  to  find  an  alternative  to 
the  H-bomb  as  the  basis  for  national  defense. 

One  can,  I  think,  have  only  sympathy  and 
respect  for  this  trend  of  thought.  It  certainly 
runs  in  the  right  direction.  Force  is,  and  always 
will  be,  an  indispensible  ingredient  in  human 
affairs.  A  first  step  away  from  the  horrors  of  the 
atom  must  be  the  adequate  development  of 
agencies  of  force  more  flexible,  more  discrimi- 
nate, and  less  suicidal  in  their  effects.  Had  it 
been  possible  to  develop  such  agencies  in  a 
form  clearly  distinguishable  from  the  atomic 
weapon,  this  unquestionably  would  have  pro- 
vided the  most  natural  path  of  escape  from  our 
present  dilemma. 

Unfortunately,  this  seems  no  longer  to  be 
an  alternative,  at  least  so  far  as  the  great  nuclear 
powers  are  concerned.  The  so-called  tactical 
atomic  weapon  is  now  being  introduced  into  the 
armed  forces  of  the  United  States  and  there  is 
an  intention,  as  I  understand  it,  to  introduce 
it  into  Britain's.  We  must  assume  that  the  same 
thing  is  occurring  in  the  Soviet  Union.  While 
many  people  in  our  respective  governments 
have  become  convinced,  I  am  sure,  of  the  need 
for  being  able  to  fight  limited  as  well  as  total 
wars,  it  is  largely  by  the  use  of  the  tactical  atomic 
weapon  that  they  propose  to  fight  them.  It 
appears  to  be  their  hope  that  by  cultivation  of 
the  tactical  weapon  we  can  place  ourselves  in  a 
position  to  defend  the  NATO  countries  success- 
fully without  resorting  to  the  long-range  strategic 
one;  that  our  adversaries  can  also  be  brought  to 
refrain  from  employing  the  hydrogen  bomb; 
that  warfare  can  thus  be  restricted  to  whatever 
the   tactical   weapon    implies;    and    that   in   this 


40 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


way  the  more  apocalyptic  effects  of  nuclear  war- 
fare may  l>e  avoided.* 

It  is  this  thesis  which  I  cannol  accept.  That  it 
would  prove  possible,  in  the  evenl  ol  an  atomic 
war.  to  arrive  at  some  tacit  and  workable  under- 
standing with  the  adversary  as  to  the  degree  of 
destructiveness  of  the  weapons  that  would  be 
used  and  the  sort  of  target  to  which  they  would 
be  directed,  seems  to  me  a  \cr\  slender  and  wish- 
ful hope  indeed. 

But  beyond  this,  let  us  bear  in  mind  the 
probable  effects— the  effects,  particularly,  on  the 
people  in  whose  country  such  a  war  might  be 
waged— of  the  use  of  tactical  atomic  weapons. 
There  seems  to  be  a  duel  I  id  assumption  that 
these  weapons  are  relatively  harmless  things, 
to  be  used  solely  against  the  armed  forces  of  the 
enemy  and  without  serious  ulterior  disadvan- 
tages. Bui  surer)  this  is  not  so?  Even  the  tactical 
atomic  weapon  is  destructive  to  a  degree  that 
sickens  the  imagination.  If  the  experience  of  this 
century  has  taught  us  anything,  i(  is  that  the 
long-term  effects  of  modern  war  are  by  no  means 
governed  just  by  the  formal  outcome  of  the 
struggle  in  terms  of  victory  or  defeat.  Modern 
war  is  not  just  an  instrument  of  policy.  It  is  an 
experience  in  itself.  It  does  things  to  him  who 
practices  it,  irrespective  of  whether  he  wins  or 
loses.  Can  we  really  suppose  that  poor  old 
Europe,  so  deeply  and  insidiously  weakened  by 
the  ulterior  effects  of  the  two  previous  wars  of 
this  century,  could  stand  another  and  even  more 
horrible  ordeal  of  this  nature?  And  let  us  ask 
ourselves  in  all  seriousness  how  much  worth  sav- 
ing is  going  to  be  saved  if  war  now  rages  for  the 
third  time  in  a  half-century  over  the  face  of 
Europe,  and  this  time  in  a  form  vastly  more 
destructive  than  anything  ever  known  before. 

There  is  a  further  danger,  and  a  very  im- 
minent one  as  things  now  stand;  and  this  is  that 
atomic  weapons  strategic  or  tactical  or  both  may 
be  placed  in  the  arsenals  of  our  continental 
allies. 

I  cannot  overemphasize  the  fatefulness  of 
such  a  step.  I  do  not  see  how  it  could  fail  to 
produce  a  serious  increase  in  the  existing  mili- 
tary tension  in  Europe.  It  would  be  bound  to 
raise  a  grave  problem  for  the  Russians  in  respect 
of  their  own  military  dispositions  and  their  rela- 
tions with  the  other  Warsaw  Pact  countries. 
Moscow  is  not  going  to  be  inclined  to  entrust  its 
satellites  with   full  control   over  such  weapons. 

*  This  view  is  set  forth  in  a  book  which  recently 
has  attracted  considerable  international  attention, 
Henry  A.  Kissinger's  Nuclear  Weapons  and  Foreign 
Policy.— The  Editors. 


II.  therefore,  the  Western  continental  countries 
are  to  be  armed  with  them,  any  Russian  with- 
drawal from  Centra]  and  Eastern  Europe  may 
become  unthinkable  for  oiue  and  lor  all,  for 
reasons  ol  sheet  military  prudence,  regardless  of 
what  the  iii.i j t )i  Western  powers  might  be  pre- 
pared to  do. 

In  addition  to  this,  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that 
the  larger  the  number  ol  bands  into  which  the 
control  over  atomic  weapons  is  placed,  the 
smaller  will  be  the  possibility  for  their  eventual 
exclusion  from  national  arsenals  by  international 
agreement. 

I  am  aware  that  similar  warnings  against  the 
introduction  ol  the  atomic  weapon  into  the 
armaments  of  the  continental  countries  have  also 
recently  been  part  of  the  stock-in-trade  of  Soviet 
diplomacy.  But  I  think  we  must  beware  of 
rejecting  ideas  just  because  they  happen  to  coin- 
cide with  ones  put  forward  on  the  other  side. 
Moscow  says  many  harmful  and  foolish  things; 
but  it  would  be  wrong  to  assume  thai  its  utter- 
ances never  happen  to  accord  with  the  dictates 
of  sobrietv  and  good  sense.  The  Russians  are 
not  always  wrong,  any  more  than  we  are  always 
right.  Our  task,  in  any  case,  is  to  make  up  our 
minds  independently. 


EUROPE  PROTECTING  HERSELF 

IS  THERE,  then,  any  reasonably  hopeful, 
alternative  to  the  unpromising  path  along 
which  we  are  now  advancing?  I  must  confess 
that  I  see  only  one.  This  is  precisely  the  opposite 
of  the  attempt  to  incorporate  the  tactical  atomic 
weapon  into  the  defense  of  Western  Europe.  It 
is,  again,  the  possibility  of  separating  geo- 
graphically the  forces  of  the  great  nuclear  powers, 
of  excluding  them  as  direct  factors  in  the  future 
development  of  political  relationships  on  the 
continent,  and  of  inducing  the  Europeans,  by  the 
same  token,  to  accept  a  higher  level  of  responsi- 
bility for  the  defense  of  the  Continent  than  they 
have  recently  borne. 

This  is  still  a  possibility.  We  have  not  yet 
taken  the  fatal  step.  The  continental  countries 
have  not  yet  prejudiced  their  usefulness  for  the 
solution  of  continental  problems,  as  we  have 
ours,  by  building  their  defense  establishments 
around  the  atomic  weapon.  If  they  could  be 
induced  to  refrain  from  doing  this— and  if  there 
could  be  a  general  withdrawal  of  American, 
British,  and  Russian  armed  power  from  the 
heart  of  the  Continent— there  would  be  at  least  a 
chance  that  Europe's  fortunes  might  be  worked 
out,  and  the  competition  between  two  political 


CHANCE  TO  WITHDRAW  OUR  TROOPS  IN  EUROPE 


41 


philosophies  carried  forward,  in  a  manner  dis- 
astrous neither  to  the  respective  peoples  them- 
selves nor  to  the  cause  of  world  peace. 

I  am  aware  that  many  people  will  greet  this 
suggestion  with  skepticism.  On  the  European 
continent,  in  particular,  people  have  become  so 
accustomed  to  the  thought  that  their  danger 
is  a  purely  military  one,  and  that  their  salvation 
can  be  assured  only  by  others,  that  they  rise  in 
alarm  at  every  suggestion  that  they  should  find 
the  necessary  powers  of  resistance  within  them- 
selves. There  is  an  habitual  underestimation 
among  these  peoples  of  the  native  resources  of 
Europe.  The  Western  Europe  of  today  reminds 
me  of  the  man  who  has  grown  accustomed  to 
swimming  with  water  wings  and  cannot  realize 
that  he  is  capable  of  swimming  without  them. 

It  is  plain  that  in  the  event  of  a  mutual  with- 
drawal of  forces,  the  continental  NATO  coun- 
tries would  still  require,  in  addition  to  the 
guarantees  embodied  in  the  NATO  Pact,  some 
sort  of  continuing  local  arrangements  for  their 
own  defense.  For  this  purpose  their  existing 
conventional  forces,  based  on  the  World  War  II 
pattern,  would  be  generally  inadequate.  These 
conventional  forces  are  designed  to  meet  only 
the  least  likely  of  the  possible  dangers:  that  of 
an  outright  Soviet  military  attack  in  Europe, 
and  then  to  meet  it  in  the  most  unpromising 
manner,  which  is  by  attempting  to  hold  it  along 
some  specific  territorial  line. 

But  this  is  not  the  problem.  We  must  get 
over  this  obsession  that  the  Russians  are  yearn- 
ing to  attack  and  occupy  Western  Europe.  The 
Soviet  threat  is  a  combined  military-political 
threat,  with  the  accent  on  the  political.  If  the 
armed  forces  of  the  United  States  and  Britain 
were  not  present  on  the  Continent,  the  problem 
of  defense  for  the  continental  nations  would  be 
primarily  one  of  the  internal  health  and  disci- 
pline of  the  respective  national  societies,  and  of 
the  manner  in  which  they  were  organized  to  pre- 
vent conquest  by  unscrupulous  and  foreign- 
inspired  minorities.  What  they  need  is  a 
strategic  doctrine  addressed  to  this  reality. 

Under  such  a  doctrine,  armed  forces  would 
indeed  be  needed;  but  I  would  suggest  that  as  a 
general  rule  these  forces  might  better  be  para- 
military ones,  of  a  territorial-militia  type,  some- 
what on  the  Swiss  example,  rather  than  regular 
military  units  on  the  World  War  II  pattern. 
Their  function  should  be  primarily  internal 
rather  than  external.  It  is  on  the  front  of  police 
realities,  not  on  regular  military  battlefields, 
that  the  threat  of  Russian  Communism  must 
primarily  be  met. 


The  training  of  such  forces  ought  to  be  such 
as  to  prepare  them  not  only  to  offer  whatever 
overt  resistance  might  be  possible  to  a  foreign 
invader  but  also  to  constitute  the  core  of  a  civil 
resistance  movement  on  any  territory  that  might 
be  overrun  by  the  enemy.  For  this  reason  they 
need  not,  and  should  not,  be  burdened  with 
heavy  equipment  or  elaborate  supply  require- 
ments and  this  means— and  it  is  no  small  advan- 
tage—that they  could  be  maintained  at  a  fraction 
of  the  cost  per  unit  of  the  present  conventional 
establishments. 

I  would  not  wish  to  suggest  any  sweeping  uni- 
form changes.  The  situations  of  no  two  NATO 
countries  are  alike.  There  are  some  that  will 
continue  to  require,  for  various  reasons,  other 
kinds  of  armed  forces  as  well.  I  mean  merely  to 
suggest  that,  if  there  could  be  a  more  realistic 
concept  of  the  problem  and  the  evolution  of  a 
strategic  doctrine  more  directly  addressed  to  the 
Soviet  threat  as  it  really  is,  the  continental  coun- 
tries would  not  be  as  lacking  in  the  resources 
or  means  for  their  own  defense  as  is  commonly 
assumed. 

The  primary  purpose  of  the  dispositions  would 
be  not  the  defense  of  the  country  at  the  frontier 
—though  naturally  one  would  aim  to  do  what- 
ever could  be  done  in  this  respect— but  rather 
its  defense  at  every  village  crossroads.  The  pur- 
pose would  be  to  place  the  country  in  a  position 
where  it  could  face  the  Kremlin  and  say  to  it: 

"Look  here,  you  may  be  able  to  overrun  us— 
if  you  are  unwise  enough  to  attempt  it— but  you 
will  have  a  small  profit  from  it;  we  are  in  a  posi- 
tion to  assure  that  not  a  single  Communist  or 
other  person  likely  to  perform  your  political 
business  will  be  available  to  you  for  this  purpose; 
you  will  find  here  no  adequate  nucleus  of  a 
puppet  regime;  on  the  contrary,  you  will  be 
faced  with  the  united  and  organized  hostility 
of  an  entire  nation;  your  stay  among  us  will  not 
be  a  happy  one;  we  will  make  you  pay  bitterly 
for  every  day  of  it;  and  it  will  be  without  favor- 
able long-term  political  prospects." 

I  think  I  can  give  personal  assurance  that  any 
country  which  is  in  a  position  to  say  this  to 
Moscow,  not  in  so  many  words,  but  in  that  lan- 
guage of  military  posture  and  political  behavior 
which  the  Russian  Communists  understand  best 
of  all,  will  have  little  need  of  foreign  garrisons 
to  assure  its  immunity  from  Soviet  attack. 

A  second  article  by  Mr.  Kennan  will  appear  in 
the  March  issue.  Like  this  one,  it  is  based  on  a 
recent  series  of  BBC  lectures  which  attracted 
world-wide  attention. 


Murray  Teigh   Bloom 


what  two  lawyers  are  doing  to 

HOLLYWOOD 


They   tried    an   experiment   which   outraged 

the  deepest  traditions  of  the  film  business — 

hut   it  saved   a   dying  company, 

changed  the  social  structure  of  the  movie 

world,  and   made  hoth  of  them  rich. 

IN  THE  movie  business  there  is  almost 
always  a  direct  ratio  between  the  speed  with 
which  a  man  rises  to  the  highest  levels  of  power 
and  the  accumulation  of  stories  about  his  chi- 
caneries, sex  life,  and  ignorance. 

Two  current  and  notable  exceptions  are 
Robert  S.  Benjamin  and  Arthur  B.  Krim. 
Chairman  of  the  Board  and  President,  respec- 
tively, of  United  Artists,  they  are  generally  recog- 
nized as  the  most  successful  team  in  the  entire 
industry.  Although  their  triumph  was  achieved 
in  a  brief  six-year  period  when  the  rest  of  the 
trade  was  harried  by  television,  dwindling  audi- 
ences, and  closed  theaters,  they  are  not  only 
respected;  they  are  even  rather  well-liked.  What 
makes  this  still  more  remarkable  is  that  both 
are  lawyers— a  profession  Hollywood  customarily 
associates  only  with  bad  news. 

Benjamin  and  Krim  should  have  dangerous 
enemies.  The  methods  by  which  they  trans- 
formed United  Artists  from  an  almost  bankrupt 
firm  losing  money  at  the  rate  of  $5,000,000  a  year 
to  a  true  blue  chip  with  net  earnings  of  nearly 
$3,500,000  in  1957  challenge  the  deepest  tradi- 
tions of  film  business.  They  did  it  by  enthroning 
talent:  by  offering  stars,  directors,  and  writers 
a  chance  to  be  masters  of  their  own  artistic  fate. 

In  Hollywood  where  the  writer  has  long  been 
regarded  as  a  lazy  cur,  the  director  as  a  dan- 
gerous spendthrift,  and  the  actor  as  a  charming 
but  alarming  child,  this  doctrine  of  "creative 
autonomy,"  as  UA  calls  it,  seemed  worse  than 


heresy.  It  was  generally  considered  the  idiot's 
load  to  ruin. 

When  Benjamin  and  Krim  took  over  UA  from 
Mary  Pickford  and  Charles  Chaplin  in  1951 
there  were  almost  no  independent  producers  left 
except  Sam  Goldwyn.  At  all  the  rest  of  the 
major  studios  the  production  panjandrums  like 
Danyl  Zanuck  would  decide:  "We'll  make 
twenty-five  pictures  this  year  which  will  be  based 
on  the  following  properties."  And  they  would 
be  made— using  of  course  the  talents  of  pro- 
ducers, directors,  actors,  and  writers  on  the  studio 
payroll.  Independent  was  roughly  synonymous 
with  unemployed.  Benjamin  and  Krim  have 
changed  that. 

In  1957  of  the  approximately  230  major  U.S. 
IiIims  made,  about  60  per  cent  were  turned  out 
by  independent  producers;  forty-eight  of  them 
by  United  Artists.  And  so  great  has  been  the 
force  of  the  UA  example  that  even  at  MGM, 
Paramount,  Warner  Brothers,  and  Columbia  a 
majority  of  the  films  were  produced  by  inde- 
pendent units  using  the  financing  powers,  studio 
facilities,  and  distributing  networks  of  the 
studios.  There  are  only  two  holdouts  left:  Twen- 
tieth-Century Fox  where  independent  produc- 
tion is  still  a  minor  matter,  and  Universal,  where 
it  is  non-existent. 

UA  is  still  leading  the  way.  Its  own  roster 
of  talent  includes  such  Hollywood  lions  as  Burt 
Lancaster,  Cary  Grant,  Kirk  Douglas,  John 
Wayne,  Henry  Fonda,  Gregory  Peck,  Joe  Man- 
kiewicz,  Rita  Hay  worth,  Stanley  Kramer,  Bob 
Hope,  William  Wyler,  Edward  Small,  Frank 
Sinatra,  Billy  Wilder,  Gary  Cooper,  Tony  Curtis, 
Susan  Hayward,  Richard  Widmark,  Jeff  Chan- 
dler, Clark  Gable,  and  many  more.  And  up- 
wards of  fifty  independent  producing  organiza- 
tions, invariably  built  around  a  star,  director, 
writer,  or  producer  are  now  making  films  with 
UA  financing,  for  UA  distribution. 


WHAT    TWO    LAWYERS    ARE    DOING    TO    HOLLYWOOD 


43 


UA  has  achieved  this  impressive  showing  by 
the  simple  expedient  of  elevating  talent  to  the 
status  of  a  partner.  A  top  star  in  a  UA  inde- 
pendent production  gets  anywhere  from  30  to  75 
per  cent  of  the  net  profits,  depending  on  the 
success  of  his  previous  films  and  the  cost  of  the 
venture;  if  he  is  a  big  enough  box-office  draw, 
like,  say,  Cary  Grant  he  can  command  10  per 
cent  of  the  gross  profits,  which  means  that  he 
can  make  money  on  a  picture  even  if  it  is  a  com- 
mercial failure. 


THE     SIZE     OF     THE     RISKS 

ON  E  prominent  director  recently  making 
a  film  for  UA,  who  has  also  made  films 
as  an  independent  at  another  major  Hollywood 
studio,  describes  the  differences  as  follows: 

"An  independent  working  with  the  usual 
major  studio  starts  out  with  a  fat  handicap:  he 
finds  that  25  to  40  per  cent  of  his  budget  is 
tacked  on  to  cover  studio  overhead.  With  UA 
there  is  no  overhead;  you  can  make  the  picture 
anywhere  in  the  world.  In  all  these  independent 
contracts  there  is  a  clause  that  when  the  pro- 
ducer runs  over  budget  by  more  than  10  per 
cent  the  studio  has  the  right  to  put  in  a  little 
commissar  to  tell  the  producer  what  to  do— and 
what  not  to  do.  Sure,  they  disguise  the  man's  title 
and  function  but  everyone  knows  it.  He's 
deferential  as  hell  to  the  producer  but  he's  the 
boss  from  then  on  in.  The  permissive  age  is  over. 
Papa  will  spank. 

'As  far  as  I  know,  UA  has  never  sent  a  com- 
missar and  some  of  their  pictues  have  gone  over 

budget.    When  I  was  at they  looked  at 

my  rushes  every  day.  That's  like  a  novelist  hav- 
ing to  send  in  his  daily  few  pages  to  his  pub- 
lisher as  he  writes  them.  What  kind  of  talent 
can  work  that  way? 

"Take  screen  credits.  Don't  let  anyone  kid  you 
that  they're  unimportant.  If  you're  an  inde- 
pendent with  other  major  studios  you  won't  get 
top  credit  on  the  opening  title.  With  UA  I  get 
top  credit  and  somewhere  down  at  the  bottom 
there'll  be  a  modest  line:  'Released  by  United 
Artists.'  Benjamin  and  Krim  stick  to  their  roles; 
they  don't  make  believe  they're  producers  and 
they  don't  compete  with  us  for  kudos." 

Benjamin  and  Krim  have  no  illusions  that 
everyone   is   suited   to   independent   production. 

"You  need  great  drive,  tremendous  self-confi- 
dence, a  need  to  be  in  business  for  yourself," 
Benjamin  says.  "Also  you  need  courage:  it  may 
take  eighteen  months  from  the  time  we  advance 
the  pre-production  money  to  buy  the  story  be- 


fore you  get  an  idea  of  the  box-office  returns." 

The  conversion  of  a  star  to  a  star-producer  is 
usually  regarded  in  Hollywood  as  a  miracle  of 
a  considerably  higher  order  than  Pygmalion's. 
When  UA's  list  of  projected  films  was  announced 
in  1955  Arthur  Krim  felt  constrained  to  tell  the 
trade  press: 

"We  don't  expect  the  stars  to  become  full- 
fledged  producers  overnight.  Some  stars  will  have 
producers  as  partners  in  the  venture;  some  will 
have  business  associates;  others  will  have  direc- 
tors as  partners;  while  still  others  will  carry  the 
business  burdens  themselves." 

As  producer  the  star  takes  over  many  of  the 
functions  of  the  omnipotent  studio  head  of  pro- 
duction—he selects  the  property  he  wants  to  do; 
a  writer;  a  director;  the  co-star,  if  any;  the  place 
he  wants  to  make  the  picture  in;  and  he  works 
out  a  budget.  UA  customarily  asks  to  approve 
the  key  ingredients  in  the  package.  But  even 
before  that  stage  it  has  usually  put  up  pre- 
production  money  to  enable  the  star  to  purchase 
the  property  and  acquire  a  working  script. 

There  are  a  few  talented  specialists  who  can 
go  over  a  film  script  page  by  page  and  predict 
the  total  cost  of  the  production  within  10  per 
cent.  Unfortunately,  they  are  not  omniscient, 
and  their  estimates  are  often  useful  only  as  a 
kind  of  general  guide. 

What  they  don't  know  and  what  Benjamin 
and  Krim  must  be  able  to  evaluate  are  the 
human  factors.  The  director,  for  example.  Is  he 
a  fast  or  slow  shooter?  How  meticulous  is  he 
about  his  takes?  How  many  takes  does  he  need 
before  he  lets  the  scene  go  into  the  can?  The 
answers  can  easily  involve  several  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  in  the  budget.  But  suppose  Billy 
Wilder  is  directing.  Bob  Benjamin  knows  that 
Wilder  is  no  film  and  time  waster.  He  "shoots 
tight."  ("You  can't  help  admiring  the  big  direc- 
tors," Benjamin  observes.  "Even  when  it  is 
money  out  of  their  own  pocket  they  will  over- 
shoot in  striving  for  quality  and  the  exact 
mood.") 

Then  there  is  the  problem  of  the  star.  How 
much  did  his  last  picture  really  gross?  This 
information  is  another  authentic  secret  known 
only  to  the  very  top  bosses  of  film  studios,  who 
sometimes  confide  it  as  a  favor.  Trade-paper 
estimates  have  various  built-in  errors. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  mechanics  and  risks 
of  UA  operation  is  the  history  of  the  picture 
"Alexander  the  Great."  Early  in  1955  writer- 
director  Robert  Rossen  showed  Benjamin  and 
Krim  seventy-five  pages  of  an  incomplete  script. 
They  liked  it. 


II 


ll  \  K  I'  I.  K  's     Vf  AGAZIN1 


\\  >     .ml.     I '. •  1 1 1 recalled  recently,    'I liai 

ii  in  could  writ*  a  picture  that  didn  i  cosi  more 
Hi. in   -i  250,000  iv  i  thou  I  top-grade  si. us  \\<    had 

.1  . 1 .  .il    W<  advanci  d  him  I  ! and  hi    wrote 

mor<  "I  iin  ■•'  i  i|>i  I >i 1 1  it  si  ill  w  asn'i  finished     1 1 

"  i    .1  ill  "ii  ,n    Now  wi  in. nl'  the  deal ore 

definite  w  i  advan<  ed  him  I  »0,000  so  thai 
In  could  "i  i  .i  si  i  design*  i  an  artist,  and  a  pro 
ilin  i  Km  in  mi",  i      1 1,    ".,i    K  H  hard    Uui  ton   foi 

.i  six  ii"  in  i  1 1  .ii  i  plus  ,i  si  i  i.i  1 1  percentage,  and 

<  lain  II loom  and  Fredd)  Man  Ii  With  oui 
hacking  he  was  abli  to  givi  them  firm  contracts, 
\  detailed  hudgei  was  agreed  upon  unli  the 
usual  l"  I"  i  '  i  in  lei  waj  In  I  he  spi  ing  ol  1955 
Rosscn  started  shooting  in  Spain  Ki  he  nectled 
in, ,i ,    mone\  In   drew   ii  from  a  fiscal  < iffi< ei   we 

api ted  ii>i  this  film    Rossen  was  investing  his 

mi  \  ii  i  ,  .mil  uui  and  i  hall  years  <>l  Ins  i  ime    w  i 

were  im esi ing  in  his  s<   taleni     Ml  ■  >i  us 

i  ii<  w  there  were  certain  hazards  here    the  inevil 

able  difficulties  in   iho ■■  a  spectacle  in  a  re 

moii    location  plus  thi    faci  we  li.nl  no  top  stars, 

"Bui   now   i. ■  trouble     ii<    was  going  ovei 

hudgei  mainly,  w<  think,  hecausi  <>i  unusua I 
local  logistical  problems     Uui  we  weren't  going 


to  .ill. mil' hi  i in  projeel  hi  take  il  "m  ol  his 
hands  \\<  don'l  work  thai  wa\  Winn  ii  w.is 
finished  the  job  ran  to  52, 100,000  I  he  box  office 
reviews  were  mixed,  In  |>.nis  ol  the  world  the 
dim  is  suii  playing  bui  we're  prett)  sure  thai 
world-widi  the  film  will  gross  about  $4,500,000, 
Incidentally,  il  broke  ever)  record  in  India  and 
in  (.iiiii 

I  ha l   sounds  .is  il   th<    picture    .1  n >u K I   have 

in. i'i'  i i\  inn  there  are  othei  costs  to  consider. 

v\  <  speni  si. (iiiii, (miii  i,,  advertise  the  film  in  the 

U.S., hei  $350,01 al  ing  aboul  '»<hi  prints 

•  >i  the  coloi  film,  \<M  $100,000  foi  freighi  ship 
UK  nis  ill  the  film,  Milium  Picture  Association 
dues,  .uui  checking  on  exhibitors  to  make  sure 
the)  were  giving  ns  an  honesi  count  on  attend 
ance,  so  in  .ill  before  we  got  back  .i  ceni  iii<- 
film  really  cosi  ns  $3,750,000.  Vnd  more,  really. 
We  have  i  world-wide  network  ol  ninety  <lis 
1 1 iimi uui  offices,  called  exchanges,  thai  cosi   ns 

aboul  $1 5,000,000  .i  yeai  to  m. ain.    In  ordi  i 

ii  this  cosi  we  made  .i  charge  ol  S2  |«'i  <  cm 

aboul  $1,500,000  in  tins  i  ,isr  ol  the  picture's 
gross,  uiinii  is  the  amount  oui  exchanges  re 
<i  ived  . ■  i iti  the  theaters  had  deducted  then  per- 


I    III    0Y,,(l 


^Jsi) 


/ 


( f( 


I  Ik\,   ancient  Biblical  scrolls  they'\>e  been  discovering    wouldn't 
ii  h,  great  >l  they  contained  ten  more  Commandments? 


WHAT    TWO    LAWYERS    ARE     DOING     TO    HOLLYWOOD 


45 


centages.  Major  theaters  usually  get  upwards  of 
50  per  cent  of  gross  box-office  receipts  to  cover 
their  costs  and  profit.  Now  when  we  add  the 
distribution  costs  'Alexander'  really  cost  $5,500,- 
000.  In  short,  we'll  be  out  of  pocket  on  this  deal 
about  $750,000.  Rossen?  We  still  think  he  is  a 
tremendous  creative  talent  and  we  hope  he  will 
make  more  films  for  us." 

UA's  deals  with  talent  almost  always  cover 
more  than  one  picture  so  that  the  losses  on  any 
one  are  balanced  against  the  hoped-for  profits  on 
the  others.  This  "cross-collateralization"  also 
enables  Benjamin  and  Krim  to  say  yes  to  films 
which  they  believe  will  be  commercial  hazards. 

When  Otto  Preminger,  who  made  the  very 
successful  "The  Moon  fs  Blue"  and  "The  Man 
with  the  Golden  Arm,"  wanted  to  do  "Saint 
Joan"  the  UA  chiefs  agreed,  even  though  with- 
out a  known  star  in  the  cast  the  film  was  a  seri- 
ous risk.  Preminger,  a  top  producer-director, 
was  willing  to  invest  his  time  and  efforts  in 
making  the  Shaw  play  and  to  try  to  create  a  new 
star  for  the  role  of  Joan.  The  film  was  a  failure. 
They  felt  his  previous  successes  earned 
Preminger  the  right  to  experiment. 

WHAT    MARTY    DID 

WHEN  Burt  Lancaster  and  his  business 
partner,  Harold  Hecht,  asked  for  a  UA 
deal  on  a  picture  they  wanted  to  make  out  of 
the  TV  play  "Marty"  Benjamin  and  Krim  went 
along  with  some  hesitation.  There  was  a  risk— 
the  film  had  no  box-office  star— but  it  was 
budgeted  for  only  $300,000.  Even  if  it  were  a 
dead  loss— which  UA  considered  possible— the 
previous  successes  of  Hecht-Lancaster  would 
more  than  cover  it. 

What  happened,  of  course,  was  that  "Marty" 
became  a  runaway  favorite  with  critics  and  pub- 
lic. It  made  $3,000,000  in  the  U.S.  and  another 
$2,000,000  abroad. 

There  are  certain  other  special  problems 
which  arise  because  as  many  as  fifty  independent 
producers  are  making  films  for  UA.  Not  lout; 
ago,  for  example,  two  UA  producers  were  bid- 
ding for  Nevil  Shute's  apocalyptic  On  the 
Beach.  The  price  went  to  $75,000  when  nor- 
mally the  book  might  easily  have  been  picked 
up  for,  say,  $40,000. 

"They  bid  and  bid  and  in  I  he  end  we'll  fiave 
to  pay  for  the  extra,"  Benjamin  comments 
dourly.  "Still,"  he  brightened,  "we  might  have 
had  four  of  our  producers  bidding  for  it." 

At  one  period  lour  of  their  producers  were 
simultaneously  working  on  plans  to  make  a  film 


biography  of  Goya.  Which  one  would  UA  favor? 
A  ground  rule  was  established:  the  producer  who 
was  first  to  get  the  consent  of  the  Spanish  gov- 
ernment and  the  Duke  of  Alba's  descendants- 
imagine  making  the  picture  without  the  nude- 
would  get  the  nod.  The  winner?  Ava  Gardner's 
Titanus  Films.    She  will  play  the  Duchess. 

Like  most  successful  revolutionaries  Benjamin 
and  Krim  neither  look  nor  act  the  part.  Their 
fourteenth-floor  connecting  offices  on  Seventh 
Avenue  in  New  York  are  good-sized  but  simply 
and  decorously  furnished.  Both  men  are  mild 
and  inconspicuous  in  dress  and  speech,  around 
the  same  age  and  the  same  medium  height;  and 
both  are  bothered  by  a  tendency  toward  putting 
on  weight. 

Benjamin,  who  is  forty-eight,  is  the  slightly 
older  member  of  the  team.  (Nearly  all  the  other' 
top  executives  in  the  film  industry  are  in  their 
sixties  and  seventies,  incidentally.)  He  was  born 
in  the  Williamsburg  section  of  Brooklyn— the 
first  step  upward  in  the  exodus  of  the  immigrant 
Jews  from  the  lower  East  Side  of  Manhattan. 
His  mother  ran  a  fish  store.  Even  while  he  was 
in  high  school  he  contributed  to  his  own  support 
by  working  as  an  office  boy  for  the  New  York 
Film  Board  of  Trade.  From  New  York's  City 
College,  which  he  attended  in  the  evening,  he 
went  on  to  night  law  school  and  a  clerk's  job 
with  the  law  firm  of  Phillips,  Nizer  where  his 
uncle,  Louis  Phillips,  was  senior  partner.  In 
19.9>l  he  was  graduated  with  honors  from  Ford- 
ham  Law  School  and  the  following  year  began 
his  practice  with  Phillips,  Nizer. 

Krim  grew  up  in  comfortable,  suburban 
Mount  Vernon,  New  York,  where  he  was  presi- 
dent of  his  high-school  graduating  class  and 
captain  of  the  cross-country  track  team.  His 
father  owned  a  large  string  of  cafeterias.  In 
Columbia  College  he  majored  in  history  and 
became  head  of  the  debating  team.  He  was 
elected  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  won  the  Elsberg  His- 
tory Prize,  and  was  urged  to  stay  on  for  graduate 
studies  in  history  with  the  promise  of  a  fellow- 
ship and  a  possible  instructor's  post  to  help  him 
get  his  Ph.  I).  Krim  was  tempted,  but  his  lather 
persuaded  him  to  study  law.  Ai  Columbia  Law 
School  he  was  first  in  his  class  and  editor  in 
chief  of  the  Law  Review.  Alter  graduation  he 
turned  down  several  offers  from  Wall  Street  law 
offices  and  went  to  work  for  Phillips,  Nizer, 
where  he  and  Bob  Benjamin  soon  became  good 
li  lends. 

Phillips,  Nizer  represented  many  lilm  com- 
panies which  were  being  sued  by  the  Depart- 
ment ol  Justice,  so  the  two  young  lawyers  learned 


46 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


a  great  deal  about  movie  law,  personalities, 
theater  operation,  and  anti-trust  laws.  In  1938 
they  were  made  senior  partners  and  the  firm 
became  what  it  is  today:  Phillips,  Ni/er,  Benja- 
min and  Krim,  considered  by  some  the  ablest 
law  firm  in  the  film  industry. 

During  the  war  Benjamin  served  as  executive 
officer  at  the  Army's  Motion  Picture  Photogra- 
phic Center  and  rose  to  the  rank  of  major.  He 
also  helped  supervise  the  photographic  coverage 
of  D-day  in  Normandy.  Krim.  who  ended  as  a 
lieutenant-colonel,  handled  special  assignments 
in  the  U.  S.  and  the  Pacific  Theater  for  Under 
Secretary  of  War  Robert  S.  Patterson.  A  few 
weeks  out  of  uniform,  Benjamin  became  head 
of  the  }.  Arthur  Rank  Organization  in  America, 
a  director  of  Universal  Pictures,  and  vice  presi- 
dent of  the  newly  formed  United  World  Pictures. 
He  was,  Variety  wrote  admiringly,  "The  man 
with  three  hats."  Krim,  less  ebullient,  was  con- 
tent merely  to  be  president  of  Eagle-Lion  films. 
Both  remained  partners  in  their  law  firm. 

Krim's  first  experience  with  movie  business 
proved  unhappy;  he  and  Eagle-Lion's  founder, 
Robert  R.  Young,  the  railroad  financier,  dashed 
regularly  and  in  1949  Krim  returned  to  his  law 
firm  full-time.  He  handled  some  negotiations 
but  spent  more  time  than  usual  reading  the  film 
trade  press.  Inevitably  he  began  to  follow  the 
decline  and  threatened  fall  of  United  Artists,  the 
last  privately  held  major  film  company  in  the 
United  States. 

MORE    THAN     MONEY 

WHEN  it  was  formed  by  Mary  Pickford, 
Charles  Chaplin,  D.  W.  Griffith,  and 
Douglas  Fairbanks  in  1919,  UA's  main  purpose 
was  "to  improve  the  photoplay  industry  and  its 
artistic  standards,  and  the  methods  of  marketing 
photoplays." 

It  did  just  that;  it  also  made  money— for  its 
owners  and  for  many  other  independent  pro- 
ducers whose  films  it  distributed  all  over  the 
world.  But  by  1949  with  two  of  the  original 
founders  dead  and  only  one  of  the  remaining 
two— Chaplin— still  making  an  occasional  film  the 
company  was  in  trouble.  There  simply  was  not 
enough  independent  production  to  keep  its  net- 
work of  film  exchanges  busy. 

Among  those  volunteering  to  try  to  patch 
up  the  remains  was  Paul  V.  McNutt,  former 
Governor  of  Indiana,  American  Legion  Com- 
mander, and  Presidential  hopeful.  Max  Kravetz, 
a  minor  movie  promoter  who  had  won  Mary 
Pickford's   confidence,    had    met    McNutt   on    a 


Pullman  diner  one  night  and  persuaded  him 
that  he  was  just  the  man  UA  needed.  Impressed 
with  McNutt's  stature  and  promises,  Pickford 
and  Chaplin  made  him  UA  chairman.  Alter 
many  hopeless  months  McNutt  desperately  be- 
gan seeking  a  way  out:  he  couldn't  possibly  raise 
the  $15,000,000  which  everyone  knew  UA  needed 
to  get  on  its  feet  again.  If  he  didn't  jump  last 
he  would  be  saddled  with  the  UA  bankruptcy. 

To  his  rescue  came  a  friend  of  Benjamin's 
and  Kihn's  named  Matty  Fox,  a  heavy-set,  color- 
1  ii  1  film  industry  executive  who  is  currently  push- 
ing Skiatron,  a  toll  TV  scheme.  In  September 
1950,  Fox  arranged  a  dinner  party  in  his  New 
York  penthouse  so  that  his  friends  could  talk  to 
McNutt.  Money  alone,  they  told  him,  couldn't 
make  films.  UA  had  to  win  back  the  confidence 
of  the  few  remaining  independent  producers 
who  were  still  in  business.  Most  of  them  were 
withholding  their  pictures  from  UA  because 
they  were  sure  the  firm  was  about  to  go  into 
bankruptcy. 

McNutt,  impressed,  recommended  the  pair  to 
Pickford  and  Chaplin.  In  February  1951,  after 
several  months  of  fitful  discussion,  Krim  made 
his  last  offer:  Krim  and  Benjamin  would  be 
made  trustees  for  100  per  cent  of  the  UA  stock 
so  that  they  could  operate  the  firm.  Half  of  the 
company's  16,000  shares  would  be  set  aside  in 
escrow  for  them.  If  in  any  one  of  the  next  three 
years  the  pair  succeeded  in  getting  UA  into  the 
black— it  was  then  losing  money  at  the  rate  of 
5100,000  a  week— they  would  be  allowed  to  buy 
the  8,000  shares  for  a  nominal  $1  a  share.  They 
also  asked  for  a  ten-day  option  to  see  what  kind 
of  operational  cash  they  could  raise.  Chaplin 
and  Pickford  accepted. 

In  a  day  Benjamin  and  Krim  were  able  to 
borrow  $500,000  from  Spyros  Skouras,  the  head 
of  Twentieth  Century  Fox,  who  was  a  good 
friend  of  theirs;  he  felt  that  a  major  bankruptcy 
in  the  film  field— even  that  of  a  competitor- 
would  be  bad  for  the  whole  industry.  But  money 
is  not  handed  out  on  sentiment  alone  in  the 
movie  business:  UA  had  to  agree  to  give  DeLuxe 
Laboratories,  a  Twentieth  Century  Fox  sub- 
sidiary, its  film  processing  work.  In  Chicago, 
Walter  E.  Heller,  a  brilliant  and  friendly  finan- 
cier who  had  made  many  large  movie  loans,  put 
up  $3,000,000  at  12  per  cent,  his  normal  fee, 
against  weekly  receipts  taken  in  by  the  ninety 
UA  film  exchanges. 

With  three  and  a  half  million  dollars  in 
cushion  money  against  failure  Krim  and  Ben- 
jamin exercised  their  option  and  took  control 
of  UA.    Most  of  their  confidence  stemmed  from 


WHAT    TWO    LAWYERS    ARE    DOING    TO    HOLLYWOOD 


47 


the  availability  as  partners  of  three  of  their 
friends  who  were  leading  specialists  in  their 
fields:  William  J.  Heineman,  domestic  sales; 
Arnold  Picker,  foreign  sales;  and  Max  E.  Young- 
stein  to  direct  advertising,  publicity,  exploitation 
and  handle  liaison  with  producers.  These  men 
came  in  as  vice  presidents,  at  reduced  salaries 
but  with  UA  stock  rights. 

To  check  on  their  foreign  operation  Benjamin 
and  Krim  went  to  Europe.  In  Paris  they  discov- 
ered that  the  UA  employees  had  so  little  to  do 
that  on  any  warm  day  a  quorum  of  them  could 
be  found  at  the  Longchamps  track.  The  partners 
checked  the  books  and  records  and  late  one  after- 
noon at  the  George  V  Hotel  faced  an  alarming 
fact:  UA  owed  $1,000,000  they  had  not  known 
about.  No  matter  how  much  money  was  lent 
them  there  was  no  way  out  unless  they  could  get 
dozens  of  pictures  into  the  distribution  pipeline 
almost  at  once. 

There  was  one  faint  hope:  Eagle-Lion,  Krim's 
old  firm,  was  in  trouble.  Krim  offered  his  former 
employer,  Robert  R.  Young,  $500,000  for  dis- 
tribution contracts  for  150  pictures.  Young, 
anxious  to  liquidate,  accepted,  and  the  films 
were  soon  grossing  $200,000  a  week  for  UA.  The 
worst  was  over.  In  December  1951  UA  was  in  the 
black  for  the  first  time  in  five  years.  In  March 
1952  an  independent  audit  confirmed  the  fact 
and  Benjamin  and  Krim  received  the  8,000 
shares  of  UA  stock  held  in  escrow  until  they 
could  show  a  profit. 

They  got  more  encouragement  when  their 
Chicago  friend,  Walter  Heller,  who  had  financed 
the  making  of  "The  African  Queen"  with 
Humphrey  Bogart  and  Katharine  Hepburn,  per- 
suaded the  producer,  Sam  Spiegel,  to  give  the 
film's  distribution  to  UA.  It  was  an  enormous 
hit  and  their  first  "quality"  picture. 

THE    TWO-HEADED     MONSTER 

SINCE  then  UA  has  gone  on  to  greater 
and  greater  years,  pouring  its  mounting 
profits  back  into  more  producion.  The  partners 
have  financed  and  distributed  a  few  films  which 
they  personally  liked  and  which  also  made  a 
great  deal  of  money,  like  "Moulin  Rouge," 
"Marty,"  and  "High  Noon."  ("If  we  made  pic- 
tures for  my  personal  taste  only,"  Krim  once 
noted  wryly,  "we'd  go  broke.")  They  have  been 
further  blessed  with  such  commercial  successes 
as  "Trapeze,"  "Not  as  a  Stranger,"  and  "Around 
the  World  in  80  Days,"  which  promises  to  be 
one  of  the  biggest  money  makers  in  motion- 
picture  history. 


In  1956  Chaplin  sold  his  remaining  25  per 
cent  interest  in  UA  to  Benjamin  and  Krim,  and 
a  year  later  Mary  Pickford  did  the  same  with  her 
stock.  In  June  1957  the  privately  held  UA  stock 
was  sold  to  the  public  in  the  form  of  common 
stock  and  convertible  debentures  for  a  net  return 
to  UA  of  $14,100,000  which  is  being  used  to 
finance  new  film  productions.  The  issue  is  now 
listed  on  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange. 

The  deal  left  Benjamin  and  Krim  still  in  con- 
trol of  the  company.  The  biggest  single  block 
of  stock,  310,000  shares,  is  owned  jointly  by 
them.  Several  thousand  stockholders  bought 
350,000  shares,  and  the  four  key  vice  presidents 
and  partners  received  77,000  shares  each. 

The  president's  and  chairman's  weekly  pay- 
checks are  surprisingly  small— $1,000  a  week  each. 
Another  $150,000  a  year  is  paid  their  law  firm, 
where  they  are  still  partners,  for  legal  counsel. 
For  the  heads  of  a  major— and  very  profitable— 
film  company  this  is  modest  compensation.  The 
usual  going  rate  is  between  $2,500  and  $4,000 
a  week  for  the  head  man.  On  the  other  hand 
any  one  of  UA's  fifty  producers  or  stars  can 
make  between  one  and  two  million  dollars  on  a 
successful  picture,  on  a  moderately  successful  one, 
at  least  $500,000. 

In  the  anxiety-ridden  film  industry  the  UA 
success  story  has  been  raked  through  again  and 
again  for  the  magic  talisman.  Some,  envious, 
attribute  it  simply  to  dumb  luck;  Benjamin  and 
Krim  came  along  at  the  right  moment  with  a  lot 
of  cheap  pictures  just  when  the  major  studios 
were  concentrating  on  "quality"  films.  The  ex- 
hibitors, starved  for  products  for  their  middle- 
of-the-week  shows,  naturally  turned  to  UA. 

"It  was  a  changing  industry  and  they  were 
equipped  for  change,"  a  competitor  says.  "They 
had  nothing  to  lose  but  their  reputations." 

Another  film  man  comments:  "Only  lawyers 
could  do  what  they  did.  They  come  from  a 
profession  where  there  is  practically  no  overhead 
investment.  They  sell  services  so  they're  im- 
pressed only  by  what  you  do,  not  what  you  own. 
Also  they  didn't  have  the  tremendous  overhead 
of  studios,  expensive  executives  who  were  your 
friends  from  the  Year  One  and  had  to  be  carried, 
and  costly  contracts  with  aging  stars.  The  only- 
contracts  they  made  were  for  pictures— some- 
thing negotiable.  How  could  they  lose?"  (Ben- 
jamin and  Krim  demur.  They  attribute  most 
of  the  UA  success  to  "the  strength  and  quality 
of  our  partners.") 

The  industry  also  has  considerable  curiosity 
about  how  its  only  "two-headed  monster,"  as 
Benjamin  and  Krim  sometimes  call  themselves, 


48 


HARPERS     MAGAZINE 


works   and   shares   powers,   money,   and   honors. 

"It's  really  Arthur's  show,"  Benjamin  insists. 
"He  dreamed  up  the  package,  negotiated  with 
UA,  and  worked  the  Eagle-Lion  deal." 

In  practice,  however,  the  partners  operate  on 
a  basis  of  complete  equality  with  no  discernible 
division  of  powers.  Either  one  can  make  a  major 
decision  in  the  other's  absence  alter  twenty-five 
years  of  close  association  each  knows  exactly 
how  tlie  othei   will  react  to  a  given  proposal. 

Some  prefer  to  deal  with  Benjamin.  He  is 
warm,  outgoing,  and  diplomatic  when  he  wants 
to  be.  He  is  also  epiie  ker  to  catch  a  producer's 
contagions  enthusiasm  lot  his  new  project.  Since 
he  has  been  around  the  industry  lot  thirty  three 
years  he  knows  jusi  about  everybody  in  it.  He 
also  deals  with  some  UA  talent  who  are  a  little 
afraid  of  Krim;  his  swift,  analytic  intelligence 
and  ability  to  find  the  weak  spot  in  a  proposed 
deal  in  ten  seconds  Hat  is  disconcerting. 

Krim,  a  bachelor,  has  bought  a  town  house 
near  Sutton  Place  where  he  lives  with  two  ser- 
vants. He  listens  to  his  vast  collection  of  records, 
reads  prodigiously,  dates  some  actress  friends, 
travels  a  lot,  worries  considerably  about  the  gam- 
bles he  and  his  partner  are  making  every  week— 
UA  has  committed  some  sixty  million  dollars  to 
future  films— and  occasionally  muses  on  what  it 
might  have  been  like  to  be  a  history  professor  at 
Columbia.  A  liberal  Democrat,  he  worked  ac- 
tively and  contributed  generously  to  the  1952 
and  1956  Stevenson  campaigns. 

In  1949  Benjamin  married  a  pretty,  bright 
English  girl  named  Jean  Holt.  The  Benjamins 
live  in  a  large,  comfortable  house  in  the  pros- 
perous suburb  of  Kings  Point  with  a  huge  boxer, 
a  small  swimming  pool,  and  two  children.  Their 
home  was   a   frequent   rallying   point   for   local 


Stevenson-for-President  groups  in  '52  and  '56. 
Nearly  all  of  their  close  friends  are  non-movie 
people  with  medium  incomes. 

Benjamin  and  Krim  have  given  much  thought 
to  the  impact  that  any  widespread  system  ol  loll 
TV  might  have  on  them.  By  making  it  possible 
lot  a  produce]  to  get  an  almost  immediate  return 
on  his  investment  without  going  through  the 
usual  (dm  financing  and  distributing  channels  it 
might  ob\  iate  the  need  lor  many  of  I'.Vs  present 
functions. 

\t  the  very  worst,"  Benjamin  says,  "there  will 
still  be  the  need  for  foreign  distribution,  which 
accounts  lor  nearly  50  per  cent  of  a  film's  gross 
today,  but  I  think  toll  TV  showing  of  new  films 
won't  be  a  set  ions  problem  to  us  until  the\  per- 
fect the  wall,  or  mural,  TV  set  which  is  stilj  only 
a  laboratoi  v  ghmnie  k." 

Meanwhile  at  least  $5,000,000  of  l'A\  esti- 
mated $70,000,000  gross  income  in  1957  came 
from  the  sale  of  its  older  films  to  TV. 

Some  competitors  see  Benjamin  and  Krim  as 
cool,  calculating,  fantastically  lucky  gamblers. 
The  partners  are  amused  at  this  idea. 

"The  real  trouble  with  Bob  and  me,"  Krim 
explains,  "is  that  we  do  not  have  gamblers'  tem- 
peraments. There  are  times  when  the  mounting 
strain  of  our  continuing  sixty-million-dollar  gam- 
ble on  talent  gets  rough  and  I  turn  to  Bob  and 
say:  'What  the  hell  are  we  doing  in  this  business?' 
Then   Bob  says,   'You   know  anything   better?' 

"Fortunately,  there  are  compensations  above 
and  beyond  money.  My  work  gives  me  a  sense 
of  creativity,  synthetic  creation,  if  you  will,  but 
creation  nevertheless.  I  like  to  think  that  in  our 
years  at  UA  there  will  be  perhaps  a  do/en  pic- 
tures made  that  wouldn't  have  been  made  if  we 
weren't  around." 


RAH! 


W 


ALT  HAM  High  School  last  year  spent  $7,334  more  on  athletics  than  it  did 
on  both  science  and  mathematics  combined,  the  School  Committee  learned  last 
night.  .  .  .  [Superintendent  John  W.  McDevitt  said]  that  1,445  pupils  participated 
in  athletics  while  only  1,233  studied  either  mathematics  or  science.  Total 
expenditures  in  the  two  fields  were  $60,000  for  athletics  and  $52,666  for  math 
and  science.  .  .  . 

Vice  Chairman  Frederick  f.  Christiansen  said  a  problem  of  American  educa- 
tion centers  on  the  fact  "that  no  one  seems  to  know  what  should  be  expected 
from  a  school  system  besides  a  winning  football  team." 

Waltham  High  School  now  has  a  football  team  on  the  way  to  a  Class  A  title. 

—Boston  Herald,  November  21,    1957. 


John  W.  Gardner 


How  to  Choose  a  College, 

If  Any 


The  President  of  the  Carnegie  Corporation — 

who  knows  a  great  deal  about  American 

colleges — offers  some  practical  suggestions 

to  students  and  parents  grappling  with 

one  of  the  most  agonizing  of  family  problems. 

OVER  the  dinner  table  this  winter  several 
million  Americans  will  argue  the  same 
perplexing  questions:  Should  Johnny  (or  Jane) 
go  to  college?  And  if  so,  to  which  college? 

The  Johnnies  and  Janes,  a  million  or  more  of 
them,  will  participate  actively  or  passively, 
wholeheartedly  or  resentfully,  while  mothers, 
fathers,  sisters,  and  brothers  pull  and  haul  at  a 
problem  they  only  partly  understand.  All  of 
them  deserve  more  help  than  they  are  likely  to 
get. 

It  is  not  easy  to  arrive  at  answers  that  will 
hold  good  for  the  great  variety  of  people  who 
face  the  college  decision.  There  are  boys  and 
girls  at  every  level  of  ability;  ambitious  ones  and 
lethargic  ones;  those  who  want  education  that 
will  show  a  quick  payoff  and  those  willing  to 
build  for  the  long  future.  There  are  wealthy 
parents  and  poor  parents;  highly  educated 
parents  and  the  barely  literate;  those  who  want 
their  boy  to  study  Greek  and  those  who  want 
their  boy  to  study  air  conditioning.  Yet  there  are 
some  things  which  hold  true  for  all  oi  them. 

Let  us  begin  at  beginning.  How  far  should 
young  men  and  women  make  their  own  choice 
of  a  college?  The  old-fashioned  answer  was  un- 
equivocal: mother  and  father  knew  best.  Then 
the  swing  of  the  pendulum  brought  a  generation 
of  parents  who  leaned  too  far  in  the  other  direc- 
tion. Now  that  we  have  experienced  both  ex- 
tremes, we  may  be  in  a  position  to  be  sensible. 


It  is  true  that  parents  are  apt  to  be  more 
experienced  in  making  such  decisions,  and  that 
they  understand  things  about  their  youngster 
that  he  does  not  understand  himself.  But  given 
the  rapidity  of  educational  change,  it  is  not 
necessarily  true  that  parents  are  better  informed 
than  their  children  about  the  matters  that  really 
count.  Selection  of  a  college  is  full  of  intangibles, 
and  young  men  and  women  are  often  the  best 
judges  of  some  of  them.  Furthermore,  college  is 
the  beginning  of  the  young  person's  independent 
life,  and  if  he  is  mature  enough  to  attend  college, 
he  is  mature  enough  to  choose  his  college. 
Parents  may  put  information  at  his  disposal,  and 
if  he  is  undecided,  may  help  him  to  make  up  his 
mind.   But  the  decision  is  not  theirs. 


IS     COLLEGE     NECESSARY  f 

THE  first  question,  of  course,  is  whether  to 
go  to  college  at  all.  This  decision  should  be 
explored  as  early  in  the  student's  high-school 
career  as  possible,  so  that  he  can  take  the  appro- 
priate preparatory  subjects. 

Whether  the  student  is  college  material  is  not 
a  mystery  to  be  solved  only  by  college  admissions 
officers.  If  a  parent  does  not  smother  the  evi- 
dence in  emotional  defenses  and  wishful  think- 
ing, he  can  arrive  at  a  fairly  sound  notion  of  his 
child's  abilities.  Parents  often  overestimate  their 
child's  abilities,  for  the  understandable— but  pro- 
foundly regrettable— reason  that  their  vanity  re- 
fuses to  accept  any  other  appraisal.  Just  as  often 
they  underestimate  his  talents  because  they  resent 
his  not  coming  up  to  standards  they  have  set 
for  him,  or  because  they  are  unwilling  to  judge 
him  in  terms  of  his  own  age  level. 

Although  parents  can  get  valuable  evidence 
outside  of  school  concerning  their  youngster's 
talents,  the  most  relevant  information  for  college 


50 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


performance    is    school    performance.     The    im- 
portant question  is: 

"How  does  he  do  in  his  straight  'academic' 
subjects:  history,  science,  languages,  and— above 
all— English  and  mathematics?" 

Though  teachers  may  be  reluctant  to  make 
general  judgments  about  a  child's  capacity,  they 
will  usually  talk  freely  about  his  work  in  specific 
subjects  and  are  almost  always  willing  to  give 
some  indication  ol  where  lie  stands  in  his  class. 
Aptitude  and  achievement  tests  will  provide  use- 
ful additional  data  to  be  weighed  with  all  of  the 
other  evidence. 

Every  youngster  should  be  encouraged  to  know 
his  own  potentialities  and  to  weigh  the  chances 
ol  developing  them.  This  may  seem  like  crush- 
ingh  obvious  advice,  vet  a  great  many  gilted 
young  men  and  women  fail  to  apply  to  college 
simply  because  no  one  eve  1  bothered  lo  awaken 
them  to  their  own  potentialities  and  to  a  sense 
of  what  college  could  mean  in   their  lives. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  all  able  boys  and  girls 
should  go  to  college.  They  may  choose  to  de- 
velop their  talents  in  some  other  way,  or  they 
ma)  choose  not  lo  develop  them  at  all;  everyone 
has  an  inalienable  right  to  waste  his  talent  if  he 
wants  to.  But  every  talented  youngster  should 
understand  that  he  can  better  serve  both  himself 
and  his  country  if  he  develops  his  native  stilts. 

On  the  other  hand  if  the  youngster  is  obvi- 
ously not  college  material,  he  needs  just  as  much 
constructive  concern  for  his  future.  There  is  in 
this  country  a  distressing  over-emphasis  on  col- 
lege education  as  a  guarantor  of  economic  suc- 
cess, social  acceptability,  and  general  human 
worth.  Since  little  more  than  one  out  of  three 
Americans  go  to  college  even  today,  it  is  disturb- 
ing to  encounter  this  widespread  feeling  that 
only  a  college  education  confers  human  dignity 
and  the  right  to  hold  one's  head  up  in  the  world. 
Nothing  could  be  sillier.  College  should  be  re- 
garded as  one  kind  of  education  beyond  high 
school,  suitable  for  those  whose  particular  apti- 
tudes and  motivations  fit  them  for  it.  The  other 
two  out  of  three  will  seek  other  kinds  of  oppor- 
tunities lor  learning  and  personal  development. 

The  greatest  problem  lor  parents,  of  course,  is 
the  large  borderline  group  who  may  or  may  not 
be  suitable  lor  college.  The  colleges  vary  so 
greatly  in  levels  of  difficulty  that  for  such 
students  the  question  can  be  finally  answered 
oidy  with  respect  to  a  specific  college.  While  a 
youth  must  be  exceedingly  bright  to  get  into 
some  of  our  leading  institutions,  he  can  get  into 
others  with  no  more  than  average  intelligence. 
And  he  can  get  into  a  few  even  if  he  is  below 


average,  though  he  is  most  unlikely  to  do  well 
when  he  gets  there. 

The  parent's  exploration  of  possible  choices 
will  be  infinitely  easier  if  he  does  not  approach 
it  with  strong  preconceived  notions  that  his 
youngster  must  go  to  college,  or  must  go  to  a 
specific  institution  that  the  patent  himself  re- 
fuels as  reputable. 

The  question  of  whether  the  high-school  grad- 
uate should  go  to  college  need  not  always  be 
answered  with  a  "yes"  or  "no."  It  may  be 
answered  with  a  "not  now."  Some  boys  and  girls 
need  to  achieve-  a  bit  of  maturity  before  they 
can  understand  the  value  of  education. 

The  "late  bloomer"  is  usually  a  boy.  Girls 
tend  to  develop  in  a  fairly  steady  and  predict- 
able fashion,  but  the  boy  may  go  through  a  pro- 
tracted  period  of  dawdling  and  interest  in  every- 
thing but  his  own  education.  Sometimes  he 
"wakes  up"  when  he  goes  out  to  find  a  job  and 
discovers  the  value  the  world  puts  on  education. 
Sometimes  he  leaves  home  and  discovers  that  his 
resentment  of  education  was  simply  resentment 
of  his  parents.   Sometimes  he  meets  a  girl. 

If  a  young  person  seems  to  have  talents  which 
he  is  not  developing,  his  parents  should  try  to 
help  him  to  find  the  experience  that  will  "wake 
him  up."  Ibis  may  be  a  job,  it  may  be  travel, 
it  may  be  going  away  to  school,  or  it  may  be  one 
or  another  kind  of  discipline.  It  may  mean  just 
keeping  still  and  letting  the  boy  find  his  own 
natural  bent,  instead  of  battering  him  with  argu- 
ments and  threats. 


YOU     NAME     IT, 
WE     HAVE    IT 

TH  E  diversity  of  higher  education  in  the 
United  States  is  unprecedented;  indeed  to 
foreign  visitors  it  is  incredible.  There  is  higher 
education  for  the  extremely  bright  and  for  the 
less  bright,  for  the  future  professional  and  for 
the  future  tradesman.  There  is  higher  education 
with  a  strong  theoretical  bias,  and  higher  educa- 
tion with  a  strong  practical  bias.  There  is  higher 
education  in  an  astonishing  array  of  fields  and 
in  every  kind  of  social  context. 

The  important  questions  posed  by  this  range 
of  choice  are  answerable  only  in  terms  of  the 
needs  of  the  young  person  and  the  kind  of 
environment  that  can  best  provide  him  with 
opportunities  for  growth. 

Consider  the  question  of  size.  The  small 
campus  offers,  in  some  respects,  an  experience  in 
social  living  that  no  large  college  or  university 
can  duplicate;  and  studies  have  shown  that  the 


HOW     TO     CHOOSE     A     COLLEGE,     IF     ANY 


51 


youngster's  relationships  with  fellow  students 
and  faculty  can  be  immensely  important  in  his 
education.  Some  youngsters  seem  to  need  the 
support  of  a  small  and  tightly-knit  community 
of  students  and  faculty,  and  to  value  the  vivid 
sense  of  belonging  to  it.  One  cannot  "get  lost" 
on  a  small  campus,  any  more  than  in  a  small 
town. 

Others  feel  hemmed  in  by  these  very  qualities. 
They  welcome  the  comparative  anonymity  and 
impersonality  of  the  big  university  where,  as  in 
the  big  city,  they  can  sample  different  worlds, 
live  their  own  lives,  and  explore  new  paths  of 
personal  development  without  community  moni- 
toring. The  large  institutions,  furthermore,  can 
usually  offer  to  students  richer  and  more  varied 
resources. 

Another  familiar  question  is  whether  the 
student  should  go  to  a  college  next  door,  in  the 
next  city,  or  a  thousand  miles  away.  By  living 
at  home  and  attending  a  college  in  the  same  city, 
he  can  reduce  his  expenses  and  extend  his  ac- 
quaintance among  the  people  with  whom  he 
may  be  associating  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Balanced  against  this,  there  are  considerable 
advantages  to  a  youngster  in  seeing  and  living  in 
an  unfamiliar  region  of  the  country.  The  indi- 
vidual who  wants  to  know  his  own  nation  had 
better  know  more  than  the  little  world  of  his 
own  upbringing. 

But  this  question  too  must  be  decided  in  terms 
of  the  individual.  Some  young  people  will  profit 
in  maturity,  independence,  and  peace  of  mind 
by  putting  three  thousand  miles  between  them- 
selves and  their  families.  Others  should  be  near 
home.  These  are  matters  of  which  the  youngster 
is  sometimes  a  better  judge  than  are  his  parents. 

Co-education  poses  still  another  problem. 
Those  who  favor  it  argue  that  it  provides  for 
easy  and  normal  relationships  between  young 
men  and  women.  They  see  one  another  casually 
and  frequently  in  everyday  clothes  and  on  their 
everyday  behavior  (so  the  argument  goes)  and 
do  not  live  a  monastic  life  five  days  (more  likely 
four  days)  a  week,  and  then  meet  in  the  artificial 
atmosphere  of  the  "college  weekend,"  with  all  of 
its  tensions  and  "party  manners." 

Others  believe  that  young  men  and  women 
will  work  better  if  the  sexes  are  separated;  that 
they  will  develop  a  more  serious  and  high- 
minded  attitude  toward  the  academic  side  of 
college  if  they  are  not  distracted  by  frivolities; 
and  that  they  will  lead  healthier  emotional  lives 
if  they  are  not  under  the  constant  tension  of 
contact  with  the  opposite  sex.  People  who  take 
this  view  do  not  underrate  the  importance  of  a 


healthy  social  life  between  young  men  and 
women;  they  simply  believe  that  it  should  be 
kept  in  its  place,  and  that  the  main  business  of 
college  is  serious  intellectual  activity. 

There  is  no  pat  answer.  It  might  be  healthy 
for  one  youngster  to  be  exposed  to  the  casual 
give-and-take  of  co-education;  it  might  be  less 
healthy  for  the  next.  The  character  of  the  col- 
lege also  makes  a  difference.  In  some  co-educa- 
tional institutions,  social  life  is  traditionally 
sane,  sober,  and  sensible;  in  others  it  is  hectic. 
Similarly  a  man's  college  or  a  woman's  college 
may  be  a  haven  of  sensible  living  or  it  may  be 
the  base  for  feverish  social  activities. 


PRESTIGE     AND     CAREERS 

TH  E  so-called  "prestige"  colleges  and  uni- 
versities present  a  special  problem.  There 
are  a  dozen  or  so  which  are  known  and  respected 
throughout  the  nation,  and  every  region  has  its 
local  favorites.  As  a  rule,  such  institutions  have 
earned  their  reputation;  they  offer  superb  oppor- 
tunities. But  too  often  H©th  parents  and  young- 
sters feel  that  acceptance  at  a  prestige  institu- 
tion means  success,  and  that  if  the  student  has 
to  attend  any  other  college  he  is  a  failure.  As  a 
result  they  are  unable  to  weigh  dispassionately 
all  the  varied  factors  we  have  been  discussing. 
Even  if  the  young  person  has  the  ability  to  get 
into  the  prestige  institution,  it  may  not  be  the 
best  place  for  him.  And  if  he  does  not  have  the 
ability  to  get  in,  he  may  accept  the  alternative 
with  a  sense  of  being  on  the  discard  heap.  This 
is  not  only  a  regrettably  gloomy  attitude  for  an 
eighteen-year-old,  it  is  also  unrealistic.  The  pres- 
tige institutions  cannot  possibly  take  all  of  the 
able  young  people  who  apply.  And,  in  any  case, 
the  leaders  in  American  life  come  from  a  great 
variety  of  educational  backgrounds.  To  narrow 
the  list  of  appropriate  colleges  to  a  few  glittering 
"big  name"  institutions  is  to  limit  the  range  of 
choice  unnecessarily. 

As  the  high-school  graduate  and  his  parents 
cope  with  the  college  decision,  the  career  ques- 
tion usually  arises,  and  it  is  natural  that  it 
should.  But  it  has  only  limited  relevance  in 
choosing  a  college. 

Many  parents  fear  that  the  youngster  is  delay- 
ing too  long  in  settling  on  the  one  thing  he 
wishes  to  do.  But  the  opposite  error  is  at  least 
as  common— perhaps  more  common:  he  may  close 
too  many  doors  too  soon.  Most  young  people 
have  potentialities  in  more  than  one  direction 
and  no  one  has  the  wisdom  to  know  precisely 
which  of  these  should  be  encouraged.  The  great 


52 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


strategy  with  young  people  is  to  keep  their  de- 
velopment sufficiently  broad  so  that,  when  they 
become  mature  enough  to  decide,  they  can  choose 
among  many  significant  possibilities. 

One  of  the  great  arguments  in  favor  of  a 
good  liberal-arts  education  is  that  it  enables  the 
youngster  to  range  widely  over  the  fundamental 
fields  of  knowledge— the  basic  fields  which  must 
precede  all  sound  professional  education.  These 
fields  equip  a  man  to  be  a  more  intelligent  wage- 
earner  and  a  more  interesting  companion,  to 
understand  himself  and  the  world  around  him, 
to  be  worthy  of  the  responsibilities  democracy 
thrusts  upon  him. 

EXPOSURE     FOR     LIFE 

EVERY  student  who  is  fit  to  attend  college 
at  all  should  expose  himself  to  as  much  of 
the  liberal  arts  as  possible.  If  he  concentrates 
narrowly  in  his  vocational  specialty,  he  may  be 
slightly  more  marketable  in  the  first  year  of  his 
job  life.  But  he  is  not  preparing  himself  solely 
for  the  first  year  of  his  job  life.  He  is  preparing 
himself  for  an  adult  lifetime.  Indeed,  any  job 
skills  he  acquires  in  college  may  be  out  of  date 
by  the  time  his  career  is  in  full  swing. 

The  more  able  the  youngster,  the  more  insist- 
ent he  should  be  upon  the  liberal-arts  ingredient 
in  his  education.  To  put  a  first-class  mind  into 
a  vocational  or  specialist  course  before  he  has 
had  ample  opportunity  to  explore  the  basic  fields 
of  knowledge  is  an  unnecessary  down-grading 
of  human  talent. 

In  general,  the  more  able  the  youngster  the 
more  critically  he  should  weigh  the  educational 
opportunities  open  to  him.  He  should  shop  with 
discrimination  and  accept  only  the  best,  both  in 
choosing  a  college  or  university  and  in  deciding 
what  courses  to  take.  He  should  insist  that  his 
education  provide  him  with  continuous  chal- 
lenge and  intellectual  growth.  He  must  expect 
steady  progress  in  the  comprehension  of  funda- 
mental principles  and  in  the  mastery  of  various 
modes  of  analysis;  and  must  not  sell  these  im- 
portant gains  for  a  mess  of  trivial  information, 
"practical"  techniques,  and  seemingly  "useful" 
know-how  which  will  soon  be  out  of  date. 

The  transition  from  high  school  to  college  is 
a  point  at  which  most  youngsters  are  ready  to 
take  a  long  step  in  the  process  of  "growing  up." 
They  are  prepared  to  put  behind  them  a  whole 
world  of  adolescent  fads  and  to  adopt  new 
attitudes,  new  values,  new  ways  of  looking  at  the 
world. 

In  his  zest  to  take  on  a  more  adult  role,  the 


college  freshman  begins  by  assimilating  super- 
ficial attitudes  and  mannerisms.  In  an  amazingly 
short  time  students  from  the  most  disparate 
backgrounds  will  pick  up  the  slang,  mannerisms, 
modes  of  dress,  and  even  the  subtleties  of  bearing 
which  characterize  a  particular  campus.  In  suc- 
ceeding months  they  will  acquire  some  infinitely 
more  significant  things:  attitudes  toward  their 
own  role  as  college  students,  toward  education, 
the  faculty,  and  the  college  itself,  toward  rela- 
tions between  the  sexes,  and  innumerable  other 
in. liters. 

What  these  attitudes  will  be  depends  to  a  con- 
siderable degree  on  the  college  the  student 
attends.  Each  institution  has  a  style  that  reveals 
itsell  in  countless  ways— in  the  architecture, 
faculty,  campus  traditions,  character  of  the 
student  population,  the  tone  of  the  intellectual 
life. 

Obviously,  then,  both  parents  and  children 
will  scrutinize  the  whole  character  of  the  college 
and  they  will  not  limit  such  scrutiny  to  its 
academic  accomplishments  or  worldly  prestige. 
Clay  should  be  choosy  of  potters!  Is  the  college 
widely  reputed  to  be  a  country  club?  Is  it  gen- 
erally regarded  as  not  having  any  distinctive 
character?  What  kind  of  youngsters  attend  it? 
Is  there  a  tradition  of  serious  work  on  the 
campus?   A  tradition  of  excellence? 

ADVENTURE     AT     A     DISCOUNT 

MANY  of  our  social  critics  have  the  un- 
easy feeling  that  the  younger  generation 
is  too  preoccupied  with  security  and  conformity. 
The  assertion  may  or  may  not  be  true.  But  it 
opens  up  an  interesting  line  of  inquiry.  Do  the 
ranch  house  and  the  convertible  with  tail  fins 
define  the  new  limits  of  the  American  vision? 

We  no  longer  have  the  conditions  of  hardship 
which  once  served  as  a  sharp  spur  for  many 
people.  We  are  richer,  more  comfortable,  more 
contented  than  ever  in  our  history.  Small  won- 
der that  as  a  nation  we  are  somewhat  inclined 
to  doze  off  in  front  of  our  television  sets.  Small 
wonder  that  we  are  beginning  to  act  as  though 
we  have  no  pressing  engagements. 

But  we  do  have  pressing  engagements.  Let  us 
make  no  mistake  about  it.  Vigor  and  spirit, 
intelligence  and  courage  are  still  the  conditions 
of  survival. 

Let  us  look  at  some  specific  problems.  The 
United  States  is  engaged  in  a  fateful  effort  to 
maintain  its  position  of  leadership  and  responsi- 
bility in  the  world.  In  the  service  of  this  great 
objective,  it  is  engaged  in  a  multitude  of  activi- 


HOW     TO     CHOOSE     A     COLLEGE,     IF     ANY 


53 


ties  all  over  the  globe.  And  the  men  involved 
in  those  activities  unanimously  testify  that  the 
greatest  problem  they  face  is  the  inability  to 
recruit  able  and  well-trained  individuals.  This 
must  surely  strike  the  disinterested  observer  as 
strange:  an  enormously  wealthy  and  powerful 
nation  attempting  to  carry  through  operations 
of  profound  importance  for  its  own  future  can- 
not find  men  and  women  able  to  do  the  job. 
They  exist— but  they  cannot  be  persuaded  to 
choose  overseas  careers! 

The  drama  is  repeated  elsewhere.  Government 
agencies  cannot  find  enough  able  men  and 
women  to  perform  vital  tasks  on  the  domestic 
front.  There  are  not  enough  men  going  into 
basic  research,  not  enough  men  and  women 
going  into  teaching. 

Where  are  the  young  men  going?  The  answer 
is  simple:  they  are  going  after  high  salaries,  fat 
pension  arrangements,  job  security,  stability. 
The  adventurous,  exciting  jobs— the  jobs  which 
involve  dedication  and  a  willingness  to  serve  a 
larger  cause— mean  little.  Security  and  stability 
seem  to  mean  everything. 

The  younger  generation  has  been  heavily  be- 
labored for  this  attitude.  But  anyone  who  can- 
not see  in  it  the  fine  hand  of  the  parents  has  not 
talked  to  many  fathers  and  mothers  of  college- 
age  children.  It  is  an  understatement  to  say  that 
they  are  not  adventurous  for  their  children. 
They  are  profoundly  and  incurably  unadven- 
turous.  And  understandably  so.  Most  of  them 
grew  up  during  hard  times.  They  do  not  want 
their  children  to  suffer  as  they  did.  They  hope 
that  somehow  they  can  save  them  all  the  foolish 
mistakes,  the  blind  alleys,  the  regrets  and  the 
detours  that  characterized  their  own  lives.  Faced 
with  decisions  for  their  children,  they  favor  the 
conventional  over  the  unconventional,  the  easy 
over  the  difficult,  the  secure  over  the  risky. 

Such  attitudes  on  the  part  of  parents  are 
neither  new  nor  surprising.  But  American 
parents  today  are  in  a  better  position  than  any 
parents  in  .history  to  achieve  their  objectives. 
Today,  aside  from  the  problem  of  military  ser- 
vice, they  can  go  very  far  in  creating  a  stable 
and  secure  environment  for  their  youngster. 
Having  done  so,  and  having  wound  him  up  like 
an  eight-day  clock,  they  can  set  him  ticking  in 
his  beneficent  environment,  confident  that  he 
will  whir  quietly  along  until  he  runs  down. 

But  such  meticulous  planning  is  the  enemy 
of  vitality  and  ferment  and  growth  in  a  society. 
Throughout  our  history  we  have  profited  enor- 
mously by  the  recklessness  of  our  young  people, 
by  their  hunger  for  new  horizons,  by  their  will- 


Not  with  a  Bang 


IF  THIS  be  the  whole  fruit  of  the  vic- 
tory, we  say;  if  the  generations  of 
mankind  suffered  and  laid  down  their 
lives;  if  prophets  and  martyrs  sang  in 
the  fire,  and  all  the  sacred  tears  were 
shed  for  no  other  end.  than  that  a  race  of 
creatures  of  such  unexampled  insipidity 
should  succeed,  and  protract  in  saecula 
saeculorum  their  contented  and  inoffen- 
sive lives— why,  at  such  a  rate,  better  lose 
than  win  the  .battle,  or  at  all  events 
better  ring  down  the  curtain  before  the 
last  act  of  the  play,  so  that  a  business 
that  began  so  importantly  may  be  saved 
from  so  singularly  flat  a  winding-up. 

—William  James,    The   Will  to 
Believe,   1897. 


ingness  to  make  sacrifices  and  to  seek  something 
without  knowing  what  they  sought. 

American  youngsters  have  not  changed.  They 
are  as  brave  and  adventurous,  as  high-spirited 
and  generous  as  ever.  What  may  have  changed 
is  our  capacity  to  evoke  these  qualities. 

Parents  can  do  a  great  deal  to  give  the  young 
man  or  woman  a  sense  of  the  opportunities  and 
challenges  that  the  world  holds.  Never  in  any 
other  country  at  any  other  time  have  the  general 
run  of  young  people  been  faced  with  such  an 
extraordinary  range  of  possibilities.  The  young 
American  stands  with  the  world  before  him— 
surely  a  more  exciting  world  than  it  has  ever 
been. 

American  society  invites  the  individual  to 
participate  in  as  little  or  as  much  of  that  excite- 
ment as  he  wishes.  His  participation  is  limited 
only  by  his  capacities,  his  strength,  and  his 
motivation,  ft  is  almost  incredible  when  one 
stops  to  think  about  it  that,  with  these  challenges 
and  these  opportunities,  so  many  youngsters  drift 
off  into  vacuous  little  private  worlds  (complete 
with  rumpus  room  and  television  set),  as  insu- 
lated from  their  era  as  though  they  were  en- 
tombed in  a  time  capsule. 

No  doubt  it  is  expecting  too  much  to  ask 
parents  to  encourage  a  certain  recklessness  in 
their  sons  and  daughters.  But  conceivably  they 
could  be  persuaded  to  take  a  more  hospitable 
view  of  experimentation.  The  best-laid  plans 
may  offer  the  least  opportunity  for  growth.  Many 


54 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


of  the  most,  importam  lessons  learned  in  the 
course  of  any  life  grow  out  oi  the  mistakes,  the 
retreats,  and  the  seemingly  unprofitable  meander- 
ing. We  shall  have  lost  something  valuable  in 
human  experience  il  we  ever  become  so  efficient 
that  we  can  unfailingly  set  every  youngster  on 
the  path  that  he  will  travel  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
l>\  the  time  he  leaves  high  school. 

In  short,  parents  should  nol  assume  that  t lie 
only  possible  objective  tor  their  sons  and  daugh- 
ters is  comfort  and  senility.  The)  should  be 
hospitable  to  the  vitality  that  expresses  itself  in 
chance-taking.  They  should  accept  cheerfully  and 
even  admiringly  those  deep  convictions  that  lead 
young  people  into  some  ol  the  less  profitable  but 
more  challenging  careers.    They  would  do  well 


to  be  somewhat  humble  about  their  capacity  to 
know  what  is  good  for  iheii  children  or  to 
know  the  factors  (hat  make  foi  human  happi- 
ness. Vnd  in  equipping  them  for  the  years  ahead 
the)  must  confess  their  profound  incapacity  to 
piedicl  the  future  ol  the  world  and  the  future 
ol  our  ow  n  mm  ieiv. 

And  it  follows  that  they  must  begin  very  early 
helping  their  y6ungster  to  pack  his  bag  for  an 
unknown  future.  11  they  ecpiip  him  as  he  should 
be  ecpiipped  lor  such  a  perilous  journey— with 
fortitude  and  willingness  to  learn,  with  imagina- 
tion and  good  sense,  with  the  capacity  to  use  his 
mind  critically,  and  with  all  the  other  abiding 
values— they  can  send  him  off  without  too  precise 
knowledge  of  his  ultimate  destination. 


PHILENE  HAMMER 

AND   I   SAY   THE   HELL   WITH    IT 

I'm  a  gal  who  looks  askance 
At  items  known  as  edible  plants, 
And  longs  to  plant  each  vegetarian 
Upon  a  silent  peak  in  Darien. 

My  favorite  hobby 
Is  no*  KOHLRABI. 

How  blah  the  EGGPLANT,  and  how  scant 
My  passion  for  this  purple  plant! 
In  fact,  it  strikes  me  as  incredible 
What  one  must  add  to  make  it  edible. 

LEEKS 

Reeks. 

One  bite  of  SALSIFY,  stewed  or  fried, 
And  I  am  more  than  salsified. 

Consider  the  CARROT,  the  staff  of  Hygeia, 
The  piece  de  resistance  of  rabbits; 
Consider,  too,  SPINACH,  that  green  panacea, 
The  stuff  of  the  Popeyes  and  Babbitts; 
Consider  these  cure-alls  for  all  sorts  of  ills— 
And  pass  me  my  bottle  of  vitamin  pills. 


Also   I    don't   care    too   much   for   ZUCCHINI. 
Finis. 


A  Story  by  BEN  MADDOf 
Drawings  by  Janina  Domanska 


*M;.j^tfrfts* 


An  Old  Boy  who  made  Violins 


1SAW  a  man  smiling  while  my  daughter 
screamed,  and  he  came  across  the  little  ref- 
ugee restaurant  and  opened  his  hand,  which 
was  plated  thick  with  calluses,  and  gave-  her  a 
lemon  drop.  She  stopped  yelling,  out  of  polite- 
ness. He  was  a  wonderful  old  man,  with  eyes 
of  palest  innocence,  though  his  face  was  pink 
as  if  he  were  perpetually  angry. 

"No  need  to  cry,"  he  told  Rachel. 

She  said  to  him,  "He  always  gives  me  meat  for 
dinner." 

"What  a  crime!"  I  said  bitterly. 

She  wiped  her  nose  into  her  pretty  sleeve.  "It 
has  fat  on  it." 

"I  cut  all  the  fat  off,"  I  said. 

"He  doesn't  love  me,"  Rachel  told  the  man. 
"He  doesn't  even  like  me." 

"O'  course  he  does.  He's  got  to.  He's  your 
papa,"  said  the  old  boy.  He  leaned  on  my  table, 


his  thick  fists,  with  their  sparse  white  fur, 
planted  solidly  among  the  frivolous  refugee 
dishes.    "Name's  Mclntyre,"  he  added. 

"Wopper,"  I  said.  "George  K.  Wopper." 

"Why,  funny,  there's  a  Wopper  in  Nootka 
Bay,  Oregon,  my  home  town.  Never  liked  'em, 
though.  Kept  chickens  and  fought  the  zoning 
law.  How  old  would  you  say  I  was?"  he  asked. 

I  was  cruel.  I  guessed  sixty-five,  said  seventy. 

"Eighty-one,"  he  said  in  habitual  triumph. 
"Been  retired  seventeen  short  years.  Went  by 
like  a  flash.  Mechanical  engineer.  You  in  busi- 
ness, Mr.  Wopper?" 

"Shoes." 

"Wait  a  minute!  Let  me  talk!"  said  Rachel. 
"I'm  four  and  one-half,  my  brother  is  Robert, 
he's  away  at  a  silly  old  camp!  My  mother  took 
off  and  went  to  get  him!  He  has  the  biggest 
feet!  I  love  him  but  he  won't  let  me  take  a  bath 


56 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


with  him  any  more!  He  thinks  I'm  a  pest!  I'm 
not,  am  I?" 

"You're  my  darling,"  he  told  her.  He  gave 
her  another  lemon  drop  and  went  back  to  his 
table. 

Rachel  crunched  both  candies  at  once  in  her 
noisy  teeth,  then  knocked  over  her  glass  of  milk. 
Two  waiters  and  a  bus  boy  came  with  mops 
and  smiles.  The  whole  rest. mi  ant  smiled:  why 
shouldn't  they?— the  milk  wasn't  in  their  lap. 
Still,  I  forbore  to  scold  her.  She  was  rather 
disappointed,  I  think. 

"1  at  your  chop,  honey,  or  no  dessert,"  I  said. 

Rachel  put  her  thumb  in  her  mouth,  closed 
her  eyes  in  an  exaggerated  way,  and  leaned— 
fell,  rather— from  her  chair  onto  my  chest.  I 
kissed  her  and  signaled  for  the  bill. 

We  went  out  past  the  old  man  and  walked 
hand  in  hand  on  the  thick  lawns.  It  was  a  broad, 
elegant  park  along  the  harbor.  We  were  on  the 
last  of  a  week's  vacation,  this  foxy  child  and 
myself.  I  had  driven  all  the  way  from  Frisco 
here  to  Vancouver:  sea,  headland,  forest,  Mt. 
Shasta  ghostly  in  the  rain.  Landscape  made  me 
happy,  made  Rachel  sleepy. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  do,"  she  said. 

"Too  bad,"  I  said. 

The  sun  was  low  and  salmon-red.  The  air 
had  the  mild  Canadian  brilliance.  To  one  side 
was  the  new  bridge  to  the  city:  painted  steel 
stretched  over  green  salt  water.  Closer  by, 
cemented  into  the  grass,  was  a  transplanted  cedar 
pole,  almost  sixty  feet  high,  carved  and  painted. 
It  was  all  beaks,  eyes,  claws,  teeth,  the  bloody 
and  ritual  jaw  of  cannibalism.  A  good  way  off, 
the  old  man  had  come  out  of  the  restaurant  and 
was  shading  his  eyes  to  look  at  the  monument. 

"I  really  love  him,"  said  Rachel. 

"Who?   Bobbie?" 

"You  know  who!  Not  Bobbie!  Not  Bobbie!" 
she  screamed.  Tears  flowed  in  four  streams,  out 
of  her  eyes  and  her  nostrils.  She  was  in  a  hor- 
rible rage. 

Old  Mclntyre  came  toward  us  from  behind 
and  took  Rachel  by  the  elbows  and  swept  her 
off  the  ground.  "Grandpa!"  she  said  to  him, 
rather  sadly.  Pleased  at  this  new  name,  he  put 
her  on  his  shoulders  and  carried  her  to  the  base 
of  the  totem  pole.  He  raised  one  hand,  Indian 
fashion,  and  said,  "How!"  Some  tourists  in  new 
Scotch  plaid  berets  took  their  picture.  There 
was  a  lot  of  women's  laughter  in  the  soft,  moist 
air. 

"Injuns  made  this  pole,"  he  said  to  Rachel. 
"Pretty  good,  ain't  they?  I  do  a  little  carving 
myself."   And  he  took  her  for  a  piggy-back  ride. 


I  sat  on  the  grass  and  smoked  a  cigar.  People 
generally  were  charmed  by  Rachel,  in  public, 
anyway.  I  was  proud  of  that;  also  it  gave  me 
a  brief  rest:  the  old,  lonely,  and  yet  comfortable 
feeling  that  1  was  nineteen,  a  bachelor  again, 
without  children,  without  a  front  lawn  and  fruit 
trees  and  a  house  with  radiant  heat,  without  in- 
come and  without  income  tax. 

AS  I  leaned  back  in  the  grassy  fragrance 
and  had  this  little  backward  dream, 
Rachel  came  running  toward  me,  and  took  off 
her  scarf,  sticky  with  old  chocolate,  and  wrapped 
it  around  my  head.  "You're  so  cold,"  she  said. 
I  rocked  her  in  my  lap.  The  old  man  followed 
on  his  short  sprightly  legs,  and  stood  over  me 
with  benevolence. 

"Shoes  are  a  good  line,"  he  assured  me. 
"There's  a  steady  demand  for  shoes."  He  smiled. 
"Most  people  have  at  least  two  feet." 

Rachel  laughed  her  head  off  at  this  joke. 

I  said,  "How  do  you  spend  your  time,  Mr. 
Mclntyre?" 

"You  would  hardly  believe  it,  sir,"  the  old 
boy  said.  He  laughed,  crowed  almost.  "I  make 
violins.  That's  the  last  two  years.  Before  that, 
I  was  a  miserable  old  man."  He  haw-hawed 
again.  It  was  a  strain  in  my  neck  to  have  to 
look  up  at  him,  and  to  nod  and  smile  en- 
couragement. It  was  pity  or  guilt;  that  I  was 
half  his  age;  that  I  could  feel  the  creak  of  his 
bony  muscles,  the  thick  blood  moving  through 
hard  and  brittle  veins  in  his  head,  and  his  slow, 
padded  hands  twisting  as  he  talked,  the  great 
callus  flaking  in  the  center  of  each  palm,  and 
every  finger  blunt  as  a  thumb. 

"Few  years  ago  I  rriade  a  working  steam  engine 
for  my  grandson.  Only  this  high— you  could 
stow  it  away  in  an  apple  box.  He  didn't  like 
it  at  all.   Cried  when  he  saw  it." 

"It  must  have  been  scary,"  Rachel  said. 

"Chu-chu,  chu-chu,  chu!"  answered  Mr.  Mc- 
lntyre. "Well,  sir,  I  thought,  what  next?  Reach 
a  certain  age,  the  world  is  open.  No  obligation 
to  anybody  but  the  Lord.  I  had  all  my  tools, 
you  see,  and  a  basement  which  run  the  length  of 
the  house.  Concrete  floor.  Built  it  myself  in 
'07.  Well,  I  sat  in  that  basement  and  puttered 
with  my  tools  and  waited  around  to  die.  And  a 
feller  dropped  in  one  day—" 

I  offered  him  a  cigar;  he  took  it,  said  he'd 
save  it  for  his  grandson,  who  was  Chief  of  Police 
at  Nootka  Bay.  First  the  grandson  was  afraid 
of  toy  steam  engines,  he  said,  and  suddenly 
he   was   Chief  of  Police;    time   was   frightening. 

"Feller    dropped    in,"    he    continued.     "Some 


AN     OLD     BOY     WHO     MADE     VIOLINS 


57 


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I-talian  name,  had  a  violin  he  wanted  fixed. 
Broken  bridge.  Heard  I  had  some  tools.  Well, 
I  repaired  it  for  him,  and  it  got  me  interested  in 
fiddles.  My  wife  plays  piano,  you  know,  or  did 
till  she  up  and  left  me." 

"After  all  those  years?"  I  said.   "Why?" 

"Gall  bladder,"  he  told  me.  "Went  just  like 
that."  He  clapped  his  hands.  Rachel  stared  at 
him.  Everything  he  did  was  dramatic,  in  a  dry 
way.  "Well,  well,"  he  went  on,  serenely,  "I 
bought  the  blueprints  of  the  Stradivarius  violin 
of  16  and  59.  I  had  to  send  for  wood  to  the 
country  of  Germany.  Aged  two  hundred  years  in 
a  cool  room.  I  studied  that  wood  for  three  solid 
weeks.  Day  after  Thanksgiving  I  took  a  ribbon 
saw  and  cut  out  the  back  and  the  front  and 
sanded  it  down  so  fine  it  looked  like  it  been 
waxed.  And  went  over  it  with  a  dial  micrometer. 
Yes,  I  did,  honey,"  he  said,  -kissing  Rachel. 
"Little  papoose." 

As  he  bent  down,  I  could  smell  the  bourbon. 
Suddenly  I  knew  I  detested  the  old  boy,  though 
I  couldn't  make  myself  get  up  off  the  grass,  and 
say  a  cold  good-by,  take  Rachel,  and  leave  him 
to  his  gab  and  his  blarney.  I  was  imprisoned, 
not  by  pity  any  more,  but  by  some  affectionate 
force  in  the  old  man,  in  his  violent  pink  face 
and  his  eyes  blue  as  a  baby's. 

"Lot  of  work  entailed,"  I  remarked. 

"Oh,  I'm  a  worker,"  he  agreed.  "Put  front 
and  back  of  that  violin  in  a  clamp  lined  with 
lamb's  wool,  and  rubbed  some  rosin  along  the 
edges,  and  I'm  no  player  at  all,  my  wife  took 
the  music  out  of  me  when  she  passed,  but  I 
bought  an  old  violin  bow  and  I  stroked  the 
back  and  I  stroked  the  front,  and  listened  to  the 
note  and  got  'em  in  harmony.  Harmony,  mind 
you!"  he  cried  in  his  technical  joy.  "And  where 
it  was  out  of  harmony,  I  gave  it  a  lick  with  four 


zero  sandpaper,  and  I  stroked,  I  stroked  it 
front  and  back.  And  when  it  was  ready  I  clapped 
it  together—" 

"What— no  glue?"  I  said. 

"Pure  horse's  hoof,"  he  said.  "None  of  your 
cheap  plastic.  And  I  took  that  violin  to  Mr. 
Sidney  Helmholtz  in  San  Francisco  and  he  said 
to  me,  Mr.  Mclntyre,  you're  no  amateur.  Told 
me,  he  said,  you're  no  amateur.  No  amateur! 
And  him  the  most  eminent,  mind  you,  fiddle- 
maker  in  America.  I  got  $1,800  for  that  instru- 
ment. And  I  can't  play  a  note.  That  fiddle 
will  go  on  symphonizing  away  when  I  am  nailed 
up  for  good  and  moldering  in  my  hundred- 
dollar  coffin.  Immortality.  Ain't  that  high- 
larious?— Ah!"  he  said  to  Rachel,  turning  her 
about  to  look  at  the  great  Indian  pole,  "there's 
a  piece  of  cake  you  can't  do  with  a  micrometer, 
hey  girl?"  Rachel  sprang  up  and  clasped  him 
about  the  knees  in  a  wave  of  passion. 

He  implored  us  to  come  and  visit  him  in 
Nootka  Bay,  Oregon.  He  had  bags  full  of  candy 
in  glass  jars,  he  assured  us.  And  dozens  of 
violins. 

It  grew  darker  quite  slowly.  We  felt  the  chill 
creep  down  from  invisible  glaciers;  but  we  stood 
about,  Rachel  and  I,  listening  to  the  old  boy, 
the  charmer,  the  magician  with  the  alcoholic 
skin.  At  a  little  distance  the  totem  pole,  with 
its  beaks,  teeth,  eyeballs  at  every  joint,  turned 
black  and  glittering  in  the  flood  of  the  super- 
natural moon. 

ON  M  O  N  D  A  Y  ,  on  our  way  home,  four 
days  later,  I  drove  past  a  road  sign  which 
mentioned  Nootka  Bay,  thirty  miles  to  the  west. 
The  inertia  of  the  moving  road  took  me  miles 
beyond  this  notice,  and  then  it  seemed  impos- 
sible to  turn  the  car  around  and  go  back.   Fifty 


58 


HARPER'S     M  A  GAZ1NE 


miles  later,  between  the  stones  of  ;i  bad  detour, 
I  blew  the  left  front  tire  and  rolled  down  a  long 
bill  into  a  local  garage  for  repair.  It  bad  begun 
to  rain  in  drops  as  thick  as  oil. 

We  gave  up,  and  picked  a  motel:  it  had 
accommodations  in  the  shape  of  wigwams  <>l 
poured  concrete.  I  put  Rachel  to  bed  early,  so 
we  could  be  up  at  dawn  and  home  by  afternoon 
I  remember  there  was  the  awful  vibration  of  a 
power  plant  in  the  hills  nearby.  I  fell  asleep  in 
my  socks,  and  woke  up  about  eleven  in  the 
evening.  It  was  stilling  inside.  I  tinned  off  the 
heater  and  opened  a  window  and  smelted  rain, 
pine,  and  clams.  We  were  closer  to  the  ocean 
than  1  thought.  The  old  boy  would  be  home  in 
Nootka  Ray  by  now. 

I  decided  to  shave.  In  a  horrible  fluorescent 
light,  I  ran  water  and  scraped  at  my  laic,  that 
naked  sign  of  a  man  that  stands  lor  the  rest  of 
him.  "Holy  cats,  I'm  doing  pretty  well,*'  I 
assured  myself.  "Business  highly  competitive, 
but  I  can  stand  the  gaff."  I  pounded  my  chest. 
"Two  kids,  boy  and  girl,  wifie  the  hist  in  (he 
world,  what's  your  complaint,  man?"  I  asked  the 
mirror.  "That  little  joyride  with  the  girl  in 
Shipping,  well  a  man  of  forty  plus  can't  throw 
away  a  zoftik  chance  like  that,  what  the  hell  do 
you  want?  You  tried  a  hobby,  but  no  go.  Damn 
it  to  hell—"  lor  I  had  cut  a  nick  over  that  slight 
excrescence  in  my  left  chin,  and  it  was  bleeding 
into  the  sink. 

"Hobbies,  I  tried  photography  but  the  pic  tuns 
looked  like  fried  liver,  all  evening  cooped  up 
in  a  darkroom,  who  wants  it?  Sailboats,  I 
bought  a  beauty,  it  made  the  wife  sick  as  a  dog, 
and  at  present,  I  concentrate  on  golf.  But  what's 
golf?  Knock  around  a  defenseless  little  white 
ball  for  three  hours  every  Sunday?  Grown  men, 
it's  a  form  of  lunacy.  Well,  what  do  you  want? 
You  wrote  sonnets  to  a  married  woman  when 
you  were  twenty  years  of  age,  but  you're  a  big 
boy  now,  George,  you  big  handsome  fool,"  I 
said,  patting  the  slash  on  my  chin  with  a  dry 
towel,  "so  will  you  please  tell  me  or  somebody, 
anybody,  tell  me,  what  is  this  game  all  about, 
how  corny  can  you  get?" 

I  turned  out  the  lights  and  went  back  to  bed. 
The  truth  was  this:  I  was  happy,  but  dissatisfied. 
Old  Mclntyre  had  his  immortal  violins;  the  same 
could  not  be  said  for  $9.95  shoes. 

Rachel  talked  in  her  sleep  and  awoke  me.  It 
was  past  three  in  the  morning.  She  sal  up  and 
screamed;  she  was  having  one  of  those  standard 
nightmares,  typical  for  her  age.  You  would 
think  the  kid  could  read  Gesell.  I  held  her  in 
my  arms.    She  hit  me  and  struggled  against  me 


with  all  her  force.  It  was  mad  and  frightening. 
Her  eyes  wide  open,  her  spine  stiff  and  her 
skin  trembling  and  cold,  she  screamed  she 
wanted  her  Daddy,  Daddy,  where  was  her 
Daddy?  she  also  remarked  that  she  didn't  mean 
to  kill  Bobbie,  it  was  an  accident,  it  was,  it  was, 
wasn't  it?  I  tried  to  get  her  to  eat  a  peppermint, 
but  she  spit  it  out  as  though  it  were  poison. 

Alter  (en  minutes  of  this,  she  cried  real, 
waking  teats,  and  went  to  the  toilet,  myself  hold- 
ing her  by  the  hand  as  she  sat,  mournful  and 
talkative,  afraid  to  go  back  to  the  sinister  house 
ol  sleep.  I  sang  her  all  the  songs  I  knew.  At 
breakfast,  we  were  both  quiet,  sleepy,  and  sad. 
Rachel  said  she  wanted  to  visit  Grandpa  Mc- 
Intvre,  and  I  found  myself  in  agreement.  He 
had  i he  secret,  the  old  boy;  and  we  had  to  see 
him,  both  Rachel  and  I,  two  children  with  the 
vac  at  ion  running  out. 

Wl  I  E  N  we  got  to  Nootka  Bay,  there 
weic  twenty  Mclntyres  in  the  phone 
book,  and  I  realized  I  didn't  know  the  old  man's 
firsl  name.  I  had  a  brilliant  notion,  and  called 
the  Chief  of  Police. 

Our  parents  were  afraid  of  telegrams.  Each 
century  has  its  own  mortal  conventions.  Bad 
news,  in  our  time,  always  conies  by  phone.  Black 
mouthpiece,  funereal  plastic,  the  ceremonial 
words.  "The  old  boy  passed  on,"  said  the  Chief 
of  Police.  I  le  seemed  oddly  unaffected.  "It  hap- 
pened on  the  plane  from  Vancouver.  He  was 
leading  a  paper.  Didn't  like  the  news,  I  guess, 
lie  would  have  been  eighty-two  in  December. 
You  a  friend  of  the  family?" 

"Acquaintance,"  I  said. 

"We  all  pass  on,"  he  told  me. 

"I  wonder,"  I  said  without  thinking,  "if  I 
could  buy  one  of  his  violins  from  the  estate." 

"You  could  if  there  were  any.  Man  alive!"  he 
said.   "What  kind  of  story  did  he  tell  you?" 

"Said  he  made  several  dozen  violins.  In  the 
basement  of  his  house." 

"The  old  boy  tell  you  that?  I'll  be  darned! 
You  know,  sir,  he  fooled  many  a  person.  Quite  a 
boy.  My  Grandpa  Mclntyre  was  well-known  for 
his  lies,  well-known!  Respected,  you  might 
almost  say.  Never  made  a  violin  in  his  life. 
Why  should  he?" 

I  thanked  him.  We  went  and  had  a  big  lunch. 
The  old  faker!    I  felt  some  sort  of  triumph. 

Eating  her  chocolate  pudding,  Rachel  began 
to  cry.   "We  forgot  to  see  my  grandpa,"  she  said. 

"lie's  not  your  real  grandpa,"  I  told  her. 
"Your  real  grandpa  is  in  San  Francisco,  lives  on 
Miller  Street.    You  know  that.    You  know  that 


AN     OLD     BOY     WHO     MADE     VIOLINS 


59 


perfectly  well,  now  don't  you?    God  damn  it!" 
"What  happened  to  this  grandpa?"  she  whis- 
pered.  She  was  pleased  by  my  irrational  anger. 
"He's  not  here,"  I  told  her.    "He's  gone." 
"I  know  it,"  she  said.  "In  a  cemetery.  Where 
they  put  your  old  bones.  Bobbie  told  me  all  that 
stuff.   I  don't  want  to  die."   But  she  thought  no 
more  about  it. 

We  took  a  walk  through  town.  The  sky  was 
gray,  full  of  clouds  the  color  of  fur.  The  man  at 
the  post  office  told  us  the  Mclntyre  place  was 
up  there  on  the  hill,  the  fanciest  house  in 
Nootka  Bay.  It  was  ornate,  in  fact,  but  time  had 
made  it  sober.  Rain  clouds  were  reflected  in 
the  mysterious,  flawed  window  glass  of  the  early 
century. 

I  pushed  open  a  slant  wooden  door  under  a 
thick  hydrangea,  and  saw,  as  I  guessed,  the 
gloom  of  the  big  cement  cellar.  Rachel  ran  in, 
and  began  to  collect  chips  and  shavings  from  a 
bin.  There  were,  as  the  Chief  of  Police  said,  no 
violins.  There  was  no  rosin— no  clamps,  no 
horse-hoof  glue.  The  floor  was  immaculate,  a 
number  of  steel  tools  were  hung  on  pegs  and 
smelled  faintly  of  oil.  In  one  corner  was  a  baby 
carriage  under  repair,  and  a  tarpaulin  covering 
a  heap  of  roundish  objects. 

I  pulled  off  the  canvas.  Underneath  were  a 
series  of  portrait  heads  carved  in  walnut,  teak, 
and  mahogany.    I   identified  Washington   with 


his  woman's  forehead  and  crooked  nose,  Jeffer- 
son with  the  black  concentration  in  his  eyes, 
and  some  dozen  others  I  couldn't  recognize  till 
I  saw  the  names  chiseled  into  the  base:  the  two 
Adamses,  Monroe,  Jackson,  Tyler,  Polk,  and  the 
rest.  The  old  man  had  begun  the  series  of  the 
Presidents,  and  was  only  half-way  through.  The 
men,  great  and  half-great  or  merely  typical,  sat 
crowded  under  the  canvas  as  if  talking  together 
in  heaven  or  hell.  Abe  Lincoln  was  the  master- 
piece. The  hard  strokes  of  steel  tools  had 
hacked  him  out  of  a  knot  of  myrtle.  A  print 
was  tacked  to  the  wall,  a  magazine  reproduction 
of  an  old  Lincoln  photo,  showing  the  marks 
where  the  glass  plate  had  cracked;  and  copying 
it  and  surpassing  it  in  the  sculptured  head,  the 
same  crooked  bow-tie,  the  cheeks  incised  with 
history,  the  large  melancholy  eyes,  careless  hair, 
and  the  mouth  of  tragic,  uneven  decision. 

I'm  very  emotional  lately;  I  sat  down  and  felt 
tears  in  my  eyes. 

It  was  the  old  phony  alcoholic  who  had  carved 
this  marvelous  man.  He  had  boasted  of  violins, 
but  had  done  Presidents. 

We  drove  home  next  day,  Rachel  and  I, 
through  hours  of  slow  thunder  and  rain.  She 
had  whole  pocketsful  of  shavings  from  the  bin 
in  the  old  boy's  workroom,  and  I  let  her  keep  or 
scatter  them,  as  she  chose.  In  the  wetness  of  the 
air,  they  still  had  the  smell  of  living  wood. 


Vernon  Knight,  M.D. 


ANTIBIOTICS: 


Too  much  of  a  good  thing? 


How  patients,  doctors,  and  drug 

companies  are  seriously 

misusing  the  new  "miracle  drugs." 

FIFTEEN  years  ago,  when  antibiotics 
were  first  introduced,  their  early  successes 
led  some  optimistic  souls  to  predict  an  end  to 
most  of  the  infectious  diseases  which  plague  man- 
kind. Today,  when  we  seem  to  have  reached 
the  broadest  possible  application  ol  all  known 
antibiotics,  their  list  of  achievements  is  indeed 
an  impressive  one.  Although  unhappily  many 
infectious  diseases  are  still  with  us,  antibiotics 
have  brought  under  control  such  notorious  and 
implacable  killers  of  the  past  as  common  pneu- 
monia, meningitis,  tuberculosis,  and  the  typhus 
fevers.  Tularemia  (rabbit  fever),  bubonic  plague, 
typhoid,  brucellosis  (undulant  fever),  syphilis, 
gonorrhea,  and  streptococcal  infections  also 
respond  well  to  various  antibiotics. 

but  at  the  same  time  alarming  reports  have 
begun  to  appear— reports  of  microbes  which  no 
longer  respond  to  antibiotics,  or  of  serious  and 
sometimes  fatal  reactions  in  patients  following 
the  use  of  these  drugs.  There  are  at  present  some 
one  hundred  authenticated  cases  of  sudden  death 
from  allergic  reactions  following  injections  of 
penicillin.  Asthmatic  attacks,  hay  fever,  derma- 
titis, severe  anemia  and  other  damage  to  blood- 
forming  organs,  diarrhea,  fever,  and  nausea  may 
also  result  from  the  administration  of  several 
of  the  antibiotics  now  in  use. 

Nevertheless  antibiotics  are  being  employed  in 
ever  increasing  quantities.  Approximately  two 
and  a  half  million  pounds  of  them— enough  to 
provide   a  short   course   of   treatment   for  every 


man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  country  with  a 
considerable  amount  left  over— are  being  manu- 
factured annually  in  the  United  States.  With 
stiih  an  abundance  available,  physicians  and 
patients  are  indulging  in  an  orgy  of  antibiotic 
dosing  which  is  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  neces- 
sity or  even  ol  good  therapeutic  practice. 

Drug  manufacturers  who  are  striving  in  vari- 
ous ways  to  increase  their  sales,  physicians  who 
do  not  always  apply  well-known  principles  of 
medical  practice  as  rigidly  as  they  might,  and 
patients  who  are  for  the  most  part  uncritically 
enthusiastic  about  being  treated  with  antibiotics, 
all  share  the  blame  for  this  state  of  affairs— but  a 
considerable  part  of  the  responsibility  must  be 
put  on  the  drug  companies.  In  the  early  days, 
a  pharmaceutical  house  that  produced  a  new 
antibiotic  was  richly  rewarded  by  an  enormous 
market,  relatively  or  completely  free  of  competi- 
tion, and  the  majority  of  the  bigger  firms  were 
developers  or  co-developers  of  important  anti- 
biotics. Recently,  as  the  number  of  effective 
drugs  has  increased,  it  has  become  harder  to  dis- 
cover agents  whose  properties  are  unique  or 
better  than  those  already  available.  This  has  led 
to  intense  competition  among  manufacturers  of 
existing  preparations. 

They  have  attempted  to  stimulate  sales  in 
three  ways  chiefly:  by  making  minor  alterations 
in  the  chemical  structure  of  an  antibiotic;  by 
mixing  two  or  more  antibiotics  together,  some- 
times with  a  sulfa  drug  as  well;  or  by  mixing 
antibiotics  with  headache  remedies,  vitamin  pills, 
and  other  non-antibiotic  medicinals.  As  a  result, 
the  six  basic  antibiotics— the  penicillins,  strep- 
tomycins, tetracyclines,  chloramphenicol,  ery- 
thromycin, and  novobiocin— now  appear  on  the 
market  under  the  labels  of  different  manufac- 
turers as  approximately  three  hundred  different 


ANTIBIOTICS:     TOO     MUCH     OF     A     GOOD     THING? 


61 


dosages  or  preparations  which  bring  their  makers 
a  grand  total  of  some  $300  million  a  year.  In  the 
table  below  they  are  shown  with  a  very  partial 
list  of  their  proprietary  or  trade  names  and 
their  makers. 

(In  passing  it  might  be  noted  that  the  other 
important  group  of  compounds  used  to  treat 
infection,  the  sulfa  drugs,  which  differ  from  the 
antibiotics  in  that  they  are  derived  from  basic 
chemicals  instead  of  from  the  growth  of  molds 
and  other  micro-organisms,  are  being  subjected 
to  the  same  abuses  of  distribution.) 

SALES     STIMULANTS 

CHANGING  the  chemical  structure  of 
an  antibiotic  usually  results  in  only  a 
slight  improvement.  However  in  the  absence  of 
more  significant  advances— such  as  the  discovery 
of  new  and  uniquely  effective  antibiotics— it  has 
provided  a  reasonable  and  useful  basis  for  com- 
petition among  the  drug  companies.  For  ex- 
ample, a  penicillin  preparation  was  needed 
which  would  give  an  effect  lasting  several  weeks 
after  a  single  injection.  After  a  number  of  years 


of  effort  by  several  companies,  one  of  them  de- 
veloped such  a  derivative  which  was  officially 
designated  benzathine  penicillin. 

The  other  two  practices— marketing  combina- 
tions of  antibiotics  or  a  mixture  of  antibiotics 
and  other  compounds— are  pure  sales-stimulating 
efforts  which  bear  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
patient's  best  interests.  Mixing  two  antibiotics 
which  are  both  already  available  as  single  pure 
compounds  obviously  offers  nothing  new  and 
may  even  interfere  with  treatment  by  preventing 
the  doctor  from  choosing  the  exact  dosage  of 
each  best  suited  to  the  patient's  needs.  Further- 
more the  medically  recognized  situations  which 
call  for  treatment  with  more  than  one  antibiotic 
are  few.  Yet  there  are  on  the  market  twenty-nine 
preparations  containing  two  antibiotics,  twenty 
containing  three,  eight  containing  four,  and  four 
containing   five. 

Mixing  antibiotics  with  other  kinds  of  drugs 
is  a  form  of  the  "shotgun"  treatment  which  was 
widely  practiced  in  the  days  when  medicine  had 
few  real  cures  to  offer.  Today  s'uch  unscientific 
procedure  cannot  be  justified  on  any  grounds. 
Vitamins  in  particular  have  little  place  in  the 


Major  Antibiotics  and  Their  Proprietary  Names 

OFFICIAL    NAME  PROPRIETARY   NAME 


Penicillin  derivatives: 

Numerous  chemical  modifications Numerous  names  and 

of  the  penicillin  molecule  are  manufacturers 

marketed  for  various  medical  needs 

Streptomycin     Usually  marketed  under 

official  name 

Tetracycline  derivatives* : 

Tetracycline    Achromycin  Lederle 

Polycycline  Bristol 

Panmycin  Upjohn 

Steclin  Squibb 

Tetracyn  Pfizer 

Chlor-tetracycline     Aureomycin  Lederle 

Oxtetracycline    Terramycin  Pfizer 

Chloramphenicol*   Chloromycetin  Parke    Davis 

Erythromycin* Erythrocin  Upjohn 

Ilotycin  Lilly 

Novobiocin* Albamycin  Upjohn 

Cathomycin  Merck,  Sharp 
and  Dohme 

*  Manufacture  and  sale  restricted  by  copyrights  and  patents. 


62 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


treatment  of  the  common  infections  for  which 
antibiotics  are  used,  and  the  routine  use  of 
preparations  composed  of  antibiotics  and  vita- 
mins is  merely  evidence  that  the  physician  lias 
allowed  an  advertising  gimmick  to  impair  his 
medical  judgment. 

The  physician  is,  to  be  sure,  in  a  difficult  posi- 
tion. On  the  one  hand  he  is  pressured  by  the 
elaborate  claims  of  the  drug  companies;  on  the 
other,  by  the  patient's  own  eagerness  for  a 
"miracle  drug."  Conditioned  bv  the  spectacular 
early  successes  of  the  antibiotics  and  the  piece- 
meal reporting  of  later  discoveries  -which  often 
comes  from  drug  company  publicity  men— most 
laymen  are  more  than  willing  candidates  for 
antibiotic  treatment.  Some  even  suspect  a  doctor 
who  refuses  to  prescribe  it.  Fortunately  man  has 
a  considerable  capacity  to  tolerate  noxious 
agents,  and  the  majority  of  people  who  take  anti- 
biotics are  not  harmed  by  them.  Still  it  is  high 
time  to  take  an  informed,  impartial  look  at  what 
antibiotics  can  and  can't  do. 

WHERE     THEY     DO     WORK 

BEFORE  antibiotics,  diseases  caused  by 
bacteria,  that  is  microbes  which  are  visible 
when  examined  under  a  microscope,  were  re- 
sponsible for  an  enormous  number  of  deaths 
each  year.  The  mortality  rate  from  common 
pneumonia,  for  instance,  ran  as  high  as  50  per 
cent.  Today  it  is  approximately  5  per  cent,  and 
deaths  occur  chiefly  in  patients  who  are  treated 
late  or  who  have  a  serious  underlying  disease 
like  cancer  or  a  weak  heart. 

Meningitis,  another  bacterial  disease  which 
used  to  occur  frequently  in  epidemics,  killed 
thousands  of  our  troops  in  World  War  I.  The 
death  rate  in  cases  treated  with  antibiotics  or 
sulfonamides  is  now  only  about  8  per  cent. 

Tuberculosis,  still  another  of  man's  inexorable 
enemies,  is  yielding  to  streptomycin  and  other 
chemotherapeutic  drugs.  And  it  was  in  the  treat- 
ment of  this  infection  that  the  use  of  combina- 
tions of  these  drugs  first  received  serious  study. 
It  now  appears  that  better  results  can  be  ob- 
tained in  cases  of  tuberculosis  with  the  simul- 
taneous use  of  two  or  even  three  drugs.  Treat- 
ment with  two  or  more  antibiotics  has  also  been 
found  useful  in  certain  rare  kinds  of  heart  infec- 
tion, and  in  some  cases  of  severe  undiagnosed 
infection  before  a  diagnosis  can  be  made.  But 
these  are  almost  the  only  cases  where  combina- 
tions of  two  or  more  antibiotics  are  helpful. 

Kidney  and  urinary  infections  respond  only 
moderately   well    to   antibiotics,   partly   because 


some  of  these  bacteria  are  resistant  to  the  chugs, 
and  partly  because  infections  in  this  part  of  the 
body  often  signal  the  presence  of  other  diseases 
which  must  also  be  treated  before  the  infection 
will  heal. 

Staphylococcal  infections— the  most  common 
of  which  are  boils,  bone  infections,  and  blood- 
stream infections— are  an  excellent  illustration 
of  the  clangers  of  misuse  or  overuse  of  antibiotics. 
Originally  staphylococci  were  highly  susceptible 
to  the  effect  of  penicillin  and  some  other  anti- 
biotics. But  as  these  agents  have  been  increas- 
ingly used  on  patients,  the  microbes  have  become 
increasingly  resistant,  especially  to  penicillin, 
streptomycin,  and  the  tetracyclines.  This  resist- 
ance has  been  found  to  be  directly  proportionate 
to  the  amount  the  drugs  are  used,  and  for  this 
reason  the  more  recently  introduced  and  less 
commonly  used  antibiotics  like  erythromycin, 
novobiocin,  and  chloramphenicol  are  now  our 
principal  resources  for  fighting  staphylococcal 
infection.  Staphylococci's  growing  resistance  to 
antibiotics  has  been  receiving  more  attention 
recently  in  medical  circles,  and  restrictions  on 
excessive  use  of  the  drugs  has  been  proposed  as 
the  best  way  to  improve  the  situation.  In  New 
Zealand,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  legislative  action  has 
already  been  taken  to  prohibit  the  use  of 
erythromycin  for  most  infections,  so  that  it  will 
remain  effective  against  staphylococci. 

Of  the  several  dozen  human  diseases  caused  by 
fungi,  organisms  of  more  complex  structure  than 
bacteria,  only  a  few  have  responded  well  to  anti- 
biotics. A  particularly  troublesome  one  called 
moniliasis,  which  sometimes  appears  after  anti- 
biotics have  been  given,  is  thought  by  many 
physicians  to  be  a  reaction  to  the  treatment. 

Among  the  diseases  caused  by  rickettsiae, 
which  are  smaller  than  bacteria  but  larger  than 
viruses,  there  have  been  notable  successes.  The 
typhus  fevers,  of  which  there  are  several,  for 
centuries  resisted  treatment.  An  epidemic  in  the 
Balkans  shortly  after  World  War  I  killed  150,- 
000  Serbians  in  six  months.  Today  an  apparently 
dying  patient  can  recover  promptly  after  receiv- 
ing a  few  grams  of  the  tetracyclines  or  chlo- 
ramphenicol. 

But  in  the  case  of  infections  caused  by  viruses,* 


*  For  many  years  the  common  cold  and  influenza 
were  the  only  respiratory  infections  known  to  be 
caused  by  viruses.  In  1953  scientists  succeeded  in  iso- 
lating a  group  of  new  viruses  from  patients  with  re- 
spiratory infections  which  have  been  named  adeno- 
viruses. They  still  do  not  account  for  all  cases  which 
appear  to  be  viral  infections,  however,  and  the  search 
for  further  new  viruses  continues. 


ANTIBIOTICS:     TOO     MUCH     OF     A     GOOD     THING? 


63 


or  submicroscopic  living  particles,  antibiotics  are 
useless.  And  their  administration  in  these  cases 
is  the  most  widespread  and  important  present- 
day  abuse  of  the  drugs.  Usually  they  are  given 
because  the  symptoms  of  the  numerous  nose, 
throat,  and  lung  infections  caused  by  viruses 
cannot  be  readily  distinguished  from  streptococ- 
cal sore  throats,  tonsillitis,  and  bacterial  pneu- 
monias which  are  responsive  to  treatment  with 
antibiotics. 

There  is  a  simple  laboratory  test  which  will 
make  this  distinction  which  can  be  performed 
in  twenty-four  hours,  but  in  most  cases  neither 
the  physician  nor  the  patient  is  willing  to  wait. 
Both  apparently  prefer  to  proceed  on  the  assump- 
tion that  too  much  treatment  is  better  than  too 
little  and  one  might  as  well  try  the  antibiotics. 
Actually,  no  more  than  some  five  in  a  hundred 
acute  respiratory  infections  are  caused  by  bac- 


teria which  respond  to  antibiotics.  Each  person 
in  the  United  States  is  likely  to  have  between 
three  and  ten  acute  respiratory  infections  a  year, 
making  a  grand  total  of  over  half  a  billion  cases. 
About  95  per  cent  of  these  will  not  respond  to 
antibiotics,  but  unquestionably  many  get  dosed 
with  them  anyhow. 

About  the  only  practical  application  of  anti- 
biotics in  the  treatment  of  viral  disease  is  in 
the  bacterial  pneumonia  which  occasionally  com- 
plicates cases  of  influenza  and  which  was  re- 
sponsible for  a  majority  of  the  deaths  during 
the  flu  epidemic  of  1918-19.  In  the  recent  Asian 
flu  epidemic  in  the  United  States  stockpiles  of 
antibiotics  were  accumulated  for  this  purpose. 

But  in  other  viral  diseases  the  use  of  anti- 
biotics can  be  of  benefit  only  to  the  drug  manu- 
facturers, and  of  harm  to  the  patient's  pocket- 
book,  if  nothing  else. 


TOO   LATE   NOW 


I 


T  I S  exceedingly  difficult  to  speak  of  the  great  American  Republic  without 
doing  its  citizens  unintentional  injustice.  Its  rulers,  its  leaders,  its  spokesmen, 
are  so  directly  elected  and  so  frequently  re-elected  by  the  people;  they  derive 
their  authority  so  immediately  from  the  great  mass  of  the  population  .  .  .  they 
are  so  swayed  by  its  passions  and  so  susceptible  to  its  changes  of  opinion  .  .  . 
that  we  seem  peculiarly  entitled  in  their  case  to  hold  THE  NATION  responsible 
for  the  proceedings  of  its  Government,  the  acts  of  its  officials,  and  the  language 
of  its  diplomatists.  .  .  .  Now,  we  have  no  doubt  that  men  of  gentlemanly  feeling, 
of  deep  sense  of  decorum,  of  a  clear  perception  of  what  is  due  to  others,  abound 
in  America  as  well  as  here.  The  difference  between  us,  and  the  misfortune  of  our 
cousins,  are  these— that  such  men  do  not  at  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  either 
elect  the  Government,  or  give  the  tone  to  the  nation,  or  guide  the  language 
of  the  Press.  It  is  not  that  they  do  not  exist,  but  that  they  do  not  rule.  With  us, 
the  educated  and  the  upper  classes  have  the  power  in  their  own  hands.  ...  In 
the  United  States,  it  is  the  mass  who  govern;  it  is  they  who  dictate  what  shall 
be  done  and  said;  it  is  they  who  elect  the  Government,  and  whom  the  Govern- 
ment must  serve;  in  fine,  it  is  they  who  have  to  be  acted  down  to  and  written 
down  to.  This  is  a  grievous  evil,  a  great  embarrassment,  and  a  sad  discredit; 
but  it  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  of  a  better  and  nobler  order  of  citizens 
remaining  overpowered  indeed,  but  neither  silent  nor  inactive,  in  the  back- 
ground; it  must  not  prevent  us  from  refusing,  as  often  as  we  are  permitted,  to 
judge  the  nation  by  its  official  organs.  In  all  likelihood,  if  the  paramount  power 
in  England  ever  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  working  classes,  and  the  less  cultivated 
of  the  trading  classes,  and  the  least  scrupulous  of  legal  and  political  adventurers, 
who  now  only  share  it  ...  we  might  have  nearly  as  much  violence,  folly,  and 
discourtesy  to  blush  for  and  to  blame. 


—The  Economist,  London,  September  9,  1854. 


By  ALBERT    N.   VOTAW 

Dranings  by  Charles  W .  Walker 


The  Hillbillies  Invade  Chicago 


The  city's  toughest  integration  problem 

has  nothing  to  do  with  Negroes.  .  .  . 

It   involves  a  small  army  of  white, 

Protestant,  Early  American  migrants  from 

the  South — who  are  usually  proud, 

poor,   primitive,  and   fast  with   a  knife. 

APATHETIC  though  bumptious  mi- 
nority of  70,000  newcomers  among  Chi- 
cago's motley  population  of  four  million  is  dis- 
turbing the  city's  peace  these  days— and  inci- 
dentally proving  to  everybody  who  will  listen 
that  integration  problems  often  have  nothing  to 
do  with  race,  language,  or  creed.  These  are 
Chicago's  share  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
Southern  "hillbillies"  who  have  been  imported 
during  and  since  World  War  II  to  offset  labor 
shortages  in  the  industrial  centers  of  Ohio,  In- 
diana,  Michigan,  and  Illinois. 

"In  my  opinion  they  are  worse  than  the 
colored,"  said  a  police  captain.  "They  are  vicious 
and  knife-happy.  They  are  involved  in  75  per 
cent  of  our  arrests  in  this  district." 

"I  can't  say  this  publicly,  but  you'll  never  im- 
prove the  neighborhood  until  you  get  rid  of 
them,"  commented  a  municipal  court  judge. 

"I've  been  in  this  business  fifteen  years,"  re- 
marked the  manager  of  a  large  apartment  hotel, 
"but  this  is  the  first  time  I've  had  to  carry  a 
blackjack  in  the  halls  of  my  own  building." 


These  farmers,  miners,  and  mechanics  from 
the  mountains  and  meadows  of  the  mid-South— 
witli  their  fecund  wives  and  numerous  children 
—are,  in  a  sense,  the  prototype  of  what  the  "su- 
perior" American  should  be,  white  Protestants 
of  early  American,  Anglo-Saxon  stock;  but  on  the 
streets  of  Chicago  they  seem  to  be  the  American 
dream  gone  berserk.  This  may  be  the  reason 
why  their  neighbors  often  find  them  more  ob- 
noxious than  the  Negroes  or  the  earlier  foreign 
immigrants  whose  obvious  differences  from  the 
American  stereotype  made  them  easy  to  despise. 
Clannish,  proud,  disorderly,  untamed  to  urban 
ways,  these  country  cousins  confound  all  no- 
tions of  racial,  religious,  and  cultural  purity. 

Hard  times  in  the  agricultural  and  mining 
counties  of  the  South,  combined  with  talk  of 
high  wages  in  the  North,  originally  caused  this 
push  to  the  city.  And  the  labor  shortage  is 
by  no  means  over— though  the  Southern  influx 
has  leveled  off  somewhat.  Industrial  leaders  in 
Chicago  have  estimated  that  a  total  of  300,000 
new  workers  a  year  must  be  imported  for  the 
next  five  years.  With  European  sources  of  im- 
migrants almost  cut  off  by  restrictive  quotas, 
these  new  workers  must  come  mostly  from  the 
South  (Negro  and  white)  and  from  Puerto  Rico, 
Mexico,  and  the  Indian  Reservations. 

Whether  the  Southern  rural  whites— anti-social 
to  the  point  of  delinquency  in  the  eyes  of  their 
neighbors— must  remain  a  sore  to  the  city  and 
a  plague  to  themselves  depends  both  on  their 
ability    to    learn    and    on    the    city's    ability    to 


.iViii  »'»t 


Hospitality  demands  the  world's  3  great  whiskies 


T 


he  logs  crackle.  Your  friends  feel  the 
-L  warmth  of  your  welcome.  You  offer 
them  a  choice  of  the  world's  three  great 
whiskies.  A  great  Scotch.  A  great  Cana- 
dian. And  the  greatest  of  all  American 
whiskies — our  own  lord  calvert. 


We  recommend  this  mild  extravagance 
for  one  good  reason.  No  other  gesture 
speaks  so  well  of  a  host,  while  quietly 
honoring  a  guest. 

You  might  order  a  second  bottle  of  lord 
calvert.  Better  safe  than  sorry. 


Tribute  to  the  man  who  wasn't  there  — a  poignant  moment 


PAiii o  CASALS  was  ill.  His  place  in  center-stage  was 
empty.  And  somehow  you  couldn't  forger  it. 

The  festival  ended  the  way  that  it  should.  The  final 
performance  was  given  by  the  absent  (.'asals.  It  was 
his  recording  of  an  old  Catalan  ballad— the  Song  oj  the 
Birds.  The  ovation  was  thunderous. 

Casals  has  said,  "Each  day  I  am  reborn.  Each  day 
I  must  begin  again."  Such  is  the  simple  courage  that 


The  final  concert  at  last  year's  Festival  Casals  in  San  Juan.  Photograph  by  Elliott  Erwitt. 


at  last  year's  Festival  Casals  in  Puerto  Rico 


has  restored  the  Master  to  his  music.  Once  again  he  is 
ready  to  take  his  place  among  a  distinguished  group 
of  musicians— for  the  second  Festival  Casals  in  San  Juan. 
This  1958  festival  will  run  from  April  22  through 
May  8.  The  program  will  feature  works  by  Mo/art, 
Beethoven  and  Brahms.  Principal  performers  will 
include  Victoria  de  los  Angeles,  Mieezyslaw  Hors- 
zowski,  Eugene  Istomin,  Jesus  Maria  Sanroma, 


Alexander  Schneider,  Rudolf  Serkin,  Isaac  Stern, 
Walter  Tramplcr  — and  the  Budapest  String  Quartet. 

Who  can  doubt  that  this  year's  festival  will  be  even 
more  brilliant  than  the  last? 

The  great  man  himself  will  be  there. 

For  details,  write  Festival  Casals,  P.  O.  Box  2612,  San  Juan,  Puerto 
Rico,  or  to  666  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York.  Announcement  by  the 
Connnonvjcahh  oj  Puerto  Rico,  666  Fifth  Avenue,  New  Turk  19. 


i  HE  special  world  your  little  on 
lives  in  is  only  as  secure  as  you  make  it.  Security  begins  with  saving 
And  there  is  no  better  way  to  save  than  with  U.  S.  Savings  Bonds.  Safe  —  you.' 
interest  and  principal,  up  to  any  amount,  guaranteed  by  the  Governmen. 
Sound  —  Bonds  now  pay  3Va%  when  held  to  maturity.  Systematic  —  whet 
you  buy  regularly  through  your  bank  or  the  Payroll  Savings  Plan.  It's  i. 
convenient  and  so  wise — why  not  start  your  Savings  Bonds  program  toda^ 
Make  life  more  secure  for  someone  you  love. 


Tki     I      S,    Government    dors    not    pay   for    this   advertisement.    It   is 

donated    by    this    publication    in    cooperation    with    the    Advertising      H  f  Vj 

Council  and  the  Magazine  Publishers  of  America, 


THE     HILLBILLIES     INVADE     CHICAGO 


65 


treat  them  right.  Unfortunately,  they  have  an 
option  not  open  to  previous  immigrants  which 
keeps  them  from  adapting  to  their  new  world. 
They  can  always  pack  up  and  go  home— only  an 
overnight  drive  away.  Hence  they  remain  tran- 
sients in  fact  and  in  spirit. 

REBELS     FOR      GOOD      CAUSE 

TH  E  Southerners  bring  along  suspicion  of 
the  authorities— landlords,  storekeepers, 
bosses,  police,  principals,  and  awesome  church 
people.  Often,  in  Chicago  these  authorities  be- 
long to  groups  whom  the  Southerners  consider 
inferior— foreigners,  Catholics,  colored  people- 
so  the  suspicion  is  reinforced  by  prejudice.  But 
the  most  conspicuous  reason  why  the  Southerners 
look  all  wrong  in  the  city  setting  is  the  domestic 
habits  they  bring  from  small  backwoods  com- 
munities. 

Settling  in  deteriorating  neighborhoods  where 
they  can  stick  with  their  own  kind,  they  live 
as  much  as  they  can  the  way  they  lived  back 
home.  Often  removing  window  screens,  they  sit 
half-dressed  where  it  is  cooler,  and  dispose  of 
garbage  the  quickest  way.  Their  own  dress  is 
casual  and  their  children's  worse.  Their  house- 
keeping is  easy  to  the  point  of  disorder,  and  they 
congregate  in  the  evening  on  front  porches  and 
steps,  where  they  find  time  for  the  sort  of 
motionless  relaxation  that  infuriates  bustling 
city  people. 

Their  children  play  freely  anywhere,  without 
supervision.  Fences  and  hedges  break  down; 
lawns  go  back  to  dirt.  On  the  crowded  city 
streets,  children  are  unsafe,  and  their  parents 
seem  oblivious.  Even  more,  when  it  comes  to 
sex  training,  their  habits— with  respect  to  such 
matters  as  incest  and  statutory  rape— are  clearly 
at  variance  with  urban  legal  requirements,  and 
parents  fail  to  appreciate  the  interest  authorities 
take  in  their  sex  life. 

On  the  job  they  are  said  to  lack  ambition, 
but  the  picture  is  confused.  Many  workers  are 
mechanically  skilled  though  not  highly  com- 
petitive. Sometimes  malnutrition  and  ill-health 
have  left  them  weak.  While  relatively  few  en- 
roll in  on-the-job  training,  a  good  many  attend 
television  repair  schools.  Generally,  where  they 
are  employed  in  offices  (women  mostly)  or  serv- 
ice work— where  the  irregular  tempo  suits  the 
former  miner  or  farmer— their  work  record  is 
adequate.  In  theory  they  may  be  interested  in 
accumulating  a  nestegg;  in  practice  they  are 
more  likely  to  make  do  until  they  run  out  of 
money,  and  then  go  home  for  a  spell. 


Because  of  this  constant  commuting— a  family 
funeral  down  South  may  empty  an  entire  build- 
ing in  Chicago— Southerners  are  considered  poor 
tenants.  Even  worse,  some  get  wise  to  the  prac- 
tice of  rent-skipping.  One  young  man  reportedly 
brought  his  wife  home  from  the  hospital  with 
a  new  baby  in  the  morning,  and  by  lunchtime 
the  whole  family  had  disappeared  bag,  baggage, 
and  a  few  of  the  apartment's  furnishings  to  boot. 
Some  know  enough  law  to  refuse  to  pay  the  rent, 
being  sure  of  ninety  days  for  the  courts  to  act  on 
the  landlord's  eviction  request.  If  the  landlord 
changes  the  lock  to  force  out  a  tenant,  an  under- 
cover guerrilla  war  may  take  place. 

At  school— perhaps  the  most  intimate  contact 
between  immigrants  and  their  city  neighbors- 
Southern  children  are  handicapped  by  coming 
from  inferior  rural  classes.  They  are  too  old  for 
their  grades  and  too  mature  physically  for  their 
classmates.  One  principal  tells  of  cotton-clad, 
sockless  youngsters  whimpering  in  zero  weather 
at  the  school  door,  where  they  have  been  sent 
by  working  parents  an  hour  before  opening  time. 
If  the  family  goes  home  for  the  winter,  the  chil- 
dren are  so  much  farther  behind  on  their  return 
that  they  must  either  be  demoted  or  carried  as 
a  more  or  less  passive  and  unassimilated  segment 
in  the  class.  In  some  elementary  schools  which 
they  attend,  transfers  outnumber  regular  pupils, 
and  enrollment  may  vary  as  much  as  seventy-five 
a  day  among  a  total  of  one  thousand. 

Prone  to  disease— but  fearful  of  authority— 
the  Southern  whites  tend  to  avoid  immunization 
officers,  free  dental  care  in  the  schools,  polio 
inoculations.  Sometimes  fundamentalist  religious 
beliefs  complicate  their  fears.  Positive  TB  tests 
have  shown  up  in  the  Southern-infiltrated  areas 
of  Chicago  in  increasing  numbers,  and  the  1956 
polio  epidemic  was  centered  there  too. 

An  added  complication  in  the  difficulties 
which  keep  the  newcomers  both  separate  and 
inferior  in  the  eyes  of  city  residents  and  authori- 
ties is  their  rock-hard  clannishness.  Settling  to- 
gether, keeping  in  touch  with  home  by  intermin- 
able telephoning  and  frequent  trips,  they  isolate 
themselves  by  intent.  One  Chicago  block,  for 
example,  is  inhabited  almost  exclusively  by  trans- 
planted Kentuckians;  one  elementary  school 
district  was  flooded  with  fifty  families  from  a 
West  Virginia  town  where  the  mine  closed.  Their 
chief  social  diversion  is  to  gather  with  friends, 
noisily,  in  the  one  institution  they  have  origi- 
nated up   North— the  hillbilly   tavern. 

"Skid  row  dives,  opium  parlors,  and  assorted 
other  dens  of  iniquity  collectively  are  as  safe 
as    Sunday    school    picnics    compared    with    the 


66 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


joints  taken  ovei  1>\  clans  ol  fightin',  feudin', 
Southern  hillbillies  and  their  shootin'  cousins," 
said  one  ferocious  expose  in  the  Chicago  Sunday 
Tribune. 

"The  Southern  hillbilly  migrants,"  the  story 
continued,  "who  have  descended  like  a  plague  of 
locusts  in  the  last  few  years,  have  the  lowest 
standard  of  living  and  moral  code  (il  any),  the 
biggest  capacit)  for  liquor,  and  the  most  savage 
tactics  when  drunk,  which  is  most  of  the  time." 

Many  of  the  newcomers  regard  city  churches 
as  kin  to  the  authorities  they  distrust.  They 
either  stop  going  to  church  or  else  frequent  the 
store-front,  "holiness"  gospel  centers  conducted 
h\  itinerant  preachers.  Here  they  feel  at  home; 
the  women  are  not  embarrassed  by  the  greater 
elegancx  <>l  their  neighbors;  and  they  Listen  to 
the  kind  of  old-time  religion  they  are  used  to. 
Many  modern  ministers  object  to  having  to  cater 
to  their  backwoods  beliefs. 

"I  preached  for  years  in  a  mountain  church 
and  school  in  Tennessee,"  one  Chicago  p.istor, 
himself  of  Southern  origin,  said  bitterly.  "Those 
kids  walked  eight  miles  each  way,  but  we  weren't 
supposed  to  worry  about  that.  We  were  supposed 
to  teach  them  that  Jesus  would  take  care  of  all 
our  worries  by  and  by,  and  that  was  all.  The 
South  has  had  enough  of  that  type  of  religion, 
and  I'm  not  interested  in  preaching  that  way  to 
them  any  more." 

One  possible  avenue  of  religion  for  these  mi- 
grants may  be  the  regular  Southern  Baptist 
churches,  now  being  formed  in  cities  like  Chi- 
cago,     ft    is    too    soon    to   judge    whether    this 


missionary  assault  on  the  transplanted  parish- 
ioners will  tend  to  isolate  them  further,  or  to 
encourage  their  assimilation. 

YOU     NEVER     KNOW     HOW    MUCH 

IF  THE  Southerners  are  a  nuisance  to  the 
city,  the  city  is  equally  hard  on  them.  The 
mountain  folk,  as  one  of  their  friends  puts  it, 
have  been  dodging  revenue  agents  for  hundreds 
of  years,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  their  attitude 
should  change  overnight.  Authority  means 
trouble:  police,  court,  jail;  repossession  of  goods 
bought  on  time;  snoopy  social  workers;  the 
truant  officer;  the  need  to  admit  publicly— when 
asked  to  sign  for  their  youngsters'  library  cards 
—that  they  don't  know  how  to  read  or  write. 

One  of  their  sorest  complaints  is  against  goug- 
ing landlords.  An  Alabama  couple  with  eight 
children  quartered  in  two  and  a  half  rooms, 
sharing  a  general  bath,  pay  twenty  dollars  a 
week  in  rent  plus  a  two  dollar  a  week  premium 
for  each  child.     Total:   $160  per  month. 

"How  can  I  keep  this  place  clean?"  asked  one 
mother.  "The  landlord  won't  give  us  no  garbage 
can,  and  the  linoleum's  so  full  of  holes  I  can't 
sweep  it." 

What  about  moving  to  a  better  apartment? 

"You  find  me  a  landlord  going  to  rent  to 
eight  kids,"  was  the  bitter  answer. 

The  police  don't  come  fast  enough  when  called 
and  they  won't  run  a  bad  man  out  of  the  neigh- 
borhood the  way  the  string-tie,  tobacco-chewing 
sheriffs  down  South  would  do. 

"They's  a  law  against  them  kids  driving 
around  so  fast  and  burning  rubber  with  them 
noisy  mufflers.  Why  don't  the  cops  grab  them?" 

But  when  it  comes  to  taking  away  the  TV  set 
when  the  payment  is  overdue,  the  law  comes  all 
too  fast.  "How  I  wish  you  people  would  make 
it  harder  for  us  to  buy  things,"  one  Tennessean 
complained.  "Back  home  we  have  to  get  signa- 
tures and  references,  and  it  takes  two  or  three 
days.  Here  you  just  walk  in  and  order  what  you 
want,  and  you  never  know  how  much  it  costs 
until  too  late." 

This  man  learned  through  bitter  experience 
to  limit  his  installment  buying  to  two  items— 
a  television  set  and  an  automobile.  He  was 
luckier  than  many  of  his  friends,  who  had  their 
wages  garnisheed  and  lost   their  jobs. 

For  many  of  the  newcomers  there  is  a  terrible 
burden  of  loneliness.  They  are  young,  often 
newly  married,  and  away  from  home  for  the  first 
time.  For  the  man  there  is  at  least  work  and  the 
tavern.  But  for  the  woman,  sometimes  unable  to 


THE     HILLBILLIES     INVADE     CHICAGO 


67 


leave  the  apartment  for  an  entire  winter,  life  in 
the  big  city  may  mean  an  aching  homesickness. 
The  patriarchal  family  disintegrates  when  jobs 
for  women  cut  into  the  dominant  role  of  the 
lather,  and  the  absence  of  chores  leaves  the  chil- 
dren with  idle  time  outside  the  home  and  away 
from  parental  influence. 

A     DISGRACE      TO     THEIR     RACE? 

IN  T  H  E  long  run,  the  Southern  whites  will 
probably  make  their  own  compromise  with 
city  ways.  But  this  is  no  answer  for  the  very  real 
problems  of  today,  and  city  authorities  have  been 
reluctant  to  recognize  that  they  require  special 
attention.  The  first  major  ajaproach  was  made  in 
Cincinnati,  the  city  first  to  receive  Southern 
whites  in  any  appreciable  numbers.  A  1954  work- 
shop gathered  together  the  Mayor's  Friendly  Re- 
lations Committee,  various  other  city  agencies, 
and  several  sociologists,  including  one  from  Berea 
College.  This  conference  developed  a  program 
dealing  chiefly  with  job  discrimination.  In 
Indianapolis  and  some  industrial  towns  of  Michi- 
gan, similar  approaches  have  been  made. 

In  Chicago  the  main  problem  is  not  employ- 
ment, but  housing.  And  this  question,  involving 
not  just  where  men  work  forty  hours  a  week  but 
where  women  and  children  live  and  play  twenty- 
four  hours  a  day,  is  much  more  delicate  and  com- 
plex. The  most  comprehensive  approach  was  ini- 
tiated by  a  private  community  group  concerned 
with  housing,  welfare,  and  planning  in  one  of 
the  areas  of  the  city  into  which  Southern  whites 
had  moved  with  the  usual  deleterious  social  ef- 
fects. This  group  obtained  a  survey  of  the  new- 
comers, the  first  and  to  date  the  only  study  of 
this  group  in  Chicago;  and  called  together  a 
city-wide  conference  of  church,  school,  adminis- 
trative, and  civic  leaders  to  discuss  the  survey 
and  to  develop  a  program. 

This  program  attempts  to  deal  with  the  South- 
erner where  he  lives,  where  his  insularity  is  most 
pronounced,  and  where  the  prejudices  of  the 
older  groups  are  most  violent.  The  proposal  in- 
volves the  following  five  points: 

(1)  Development  of  Southern  white  leadership, 
to  create  social  and  fraternal  organizations  com- 
parable to  those  created  by  other  ethnic  groups. 

(2)  A  pilot  project  to  experiment  with  tech- 
niques for  easing  the  Southerners'  adjustment 
to  the  city  and  for  relieving  those  problems 
associated  with  their  arrival  which  are  forcing 
more  stable  families  out  of  adjacent  areas.  (The 
Welfare  Council  of  Metropolitan  Chicago  is 
currently  working  up  such  a  project.) 


(3)  Organization  of  landlords  and  building 
managers  to  enforce  higher  standards  of  tenancy. 

(4)  Increased  attempts  to  deal  with  school 
transiency. 

(5).  Continued  development  by  existing  youth 
and  welfare  agencies  of  specific  services  for  this 
hard-to-reach  group. 

The  focus  of  any  program  must  be  to  prod  the 
newcomers  to  help  themselves.  The  women  are 
the  easiest  to  reach— sometimes  through  prenatal 
clinics  for  mothers;  sometimes  through  their  jobs. 
Although  the  men  remain  a  hard  core  of  re- 
sistance to  change,  hope  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
Southern  whites  are  not  a  solidly  homogeneous 
group.  The  few  who  have  come  from  cities  are 
ripe  for  assimilation  and  critical  of  the  rural 
folk,  particularly  of  the  mountaineers. 

"If  you  think  the  hillbillies  are  making  a  mess 
of  your  schools,  you  should  see  what  they  did  to 
ours  down  in  Louisville,"  drawled  one  soft- 
spoken  new  arrival,  an  engineer.  Chicago  has  a 
social  club  of  Tennesseans— 1,500  strong— not 
one  of  whose  members  comes  from  the  hills. 

This  kind  of  rivalry  within  the  group  may 
provide  a  clue;  for  all— even  the  most  clannish 
and  stubborn— have  potentially  the  ability  to 
compete  with  city  people  on  their  own  terms. 
The  frequent  comment,  "They  are  a  disgrace  to 
their  race,"  is  an  acknowledgment  of  this  fact. 
For  this  Southern  migrant— the  white  Protestant 
artisan  or  farmer— is  the  descendant  of  the  yeo- 
man of  Jeffersonian  democracy.  No  matter  how 
anti-social  he  seems,  he  has  every  attribute  for 
success  according  to  the  American  dream— even 
in  its  narrowest  form. 

In  a  sense,  this  immigrant  is  hated  because  he 
proves  our  prejudices  wrong.  With  all  the  ill  will 
in  the  world,  the  worst  detractors  of  the  South- 
ern white  acknowledge  that  he  has  what  it  takes 
to  make  good.  The  question  is,  can  he  develop 
the  desire  to  belong  and  to  get  ahead— before  he 
packs  up  once  for  all  and  goes  home? 


FLORENCE:   AT   THE   VILLA   JERNYNGHAM 

By  Osbert  Sitwell 
Drawings  by  Robert  Benton 


The  Villa  Jernyngham  belonged  by  inheritance  to  the  Dampiers 
Who  could  neither  afford  to  keep  it  nor  to  give  it  up: 

In  the  winter  for  several  years 

They  would  sit  round  a  cold  stove  and  talk 
About  What  Could  Be  Done. 

"What  is  really  wanted  in  this  city,"  husband  and  wife  would  for  once  agree, 

"Is  a  kind  of  hotel  which  is  a  home  as  well, 

With  lots  of  little  palms  in  pots— you  know— 

And  run  by  cultivated  English  gentlepeople." 

Eventually  they  found  the  courage— and  the  capital— 
To  substantiate  their  dream. 

So  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dampier, 

Incapable  of  running  a  home  for  themselves 

Set  out  to  run  a  home  for  twenty  others,  and  be  paid  for  it: 

The  Villa  Jernyngham  nourished  in  the  press  as  a 

"First-class  Family  Pension  for  Discriminating  Guests 

In  Peaceful  Atmosphere.  Splendid  garden  and  every  home  comfort." 

The  culture  Mr.  Dampier  supplied 

While  Mrs.  Dampier  arranged  the  palm-trees  in  the  sitting-room 

With  a  dry  and  dusty  coziness, 
Presided  over  the  catering 
And  ordered  the  meals— 

The  same,  pale,  tasteless  food,  like  something 
Materialized  by  a  medium  at  a  seance— 
That  she  had  given  guests  when  the  villa  was  her  own  residence. 

Most  conveniently, 

Mrs.  Dampier  had  trained  as  a  nurse 

And  so  could  tend  the  cases 
That  arose  from  eating  the  dishes  she  provided. 


ARCHDEACON    SAWNYGRASS 

Archdeacon  Sawnygrass 

Had  no  use  for  foreign  ways, 
Yet  lived  abroad  the  whole  year 

Complaining  alternatively  of  the  heat  and  the  cold. 

He  would  arrive  at  the  Villa  Jernyngham  in  September, 

The  month  of  locust-colored  baked  earth  and  ripe  grapes, 
And  leave  in  May  when  the  dark,  sweet  earth  seethed  with  flowers, 
When  he  would  go,  as  he  phrased  it  romantically,  "to  the  mountains." 

From  boyhood,  he  must  always  have  looked  older  than  his  contemporaries- 
So  that  now,  when  he  read  as  a  First  Lesson 


FLORENCE:     AT     THE     VILLA     JERNYNGHAM 


69 


That  philoprogenitive  catalogue 

"And  Irad  begat  Mehujael: 

And  Mehujael  begat  Methusael," 

I  would  expect  him  to  continue 

"And  Methusael  begat  Archdeacon  Sawnygrass" 
Though  he  in  no  way  resembled  the  venerable  elders  of  the  prime  of  the  world: 
His  clean-shaven  face  was  ruddy, 

His  eyes,  gray  as  English  skies. 
By  nature,  he  was  calm, 
And  would  rage  only  when  his  name  was  spelt  wrongly  on  an  envelope— 

Which  it  nearly  always  was. 

Archdeacon  Sawnygrass  did  much  good  work 

Among  the  rich, 
He  perpetually  attended  tea-parties 
And  was  careful  to  avoid  picture-galleries 
Where,  sooner  or  later,  he  was  sure  to  be  brought  up  short 
Against  a  Renaissance  nude— 

"Naked,"  he  would  complain  later, 

"Glaring  and  Large  as  Life." 


MRS.    SAWNYGRASS 

Mrs.  Sawnygrass, 

Exotic  bride  and  helpmeet  to  the  Archdeacon, 

Was  no  Renaissance  nude, 
But  a  flanneled  Lutheran  from  East  Prussia,  thoroughly 

Out  of  keeping  in  a  Latin  world 
Where  the  naturalness  of  life  frightened  her, 
As  did  the  teeming,  shouting  children 
And  the  number  of  wild  flowers  in  the  spring. 
She  would  not  let  the  sun  touch  her  anywhere. 

A  hotel-dweller,  and  thus  freed  from  house-work 

Her  life  would  have  been  empty,  for  people  did  not  interest  her, 
Had  she  not  divided  it  into  two  halves 

One  part  dedicated  to  playing  the  harmonium  for  her  husband, 

The  other  to  interpreting  the  meaning 

Of  the  Book  of  the  Revelation  of  St.  John 

According  to  a  method  of  her  own  devising— 

Exciting  as  a  gambler's  system. 

Alas, 

After  decades  and  decades  of  work  and 
Just  as  she  had  decided  finally  and  proved 

Beyond  possibility  of  contradiction 
That  the  Beast  was  the  Czar  of  Russia, 

The  Revolution  hurled  him  from  his  throne 

Leaving  the  chief  role  empty, 

And  Mrs.  Sawnygrass  had  to  start  all  over  again, 
But  in  the  end  she  substituted  Lenin. 

It  was  true,  she  thought,  that  Lenin  seemed  a  greater  Beast  than  the  Czar 
—Or  more  like  a  Beast— 


70 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 

Yet  she  felt  this  imperative  change  to  be  a  reflection  on  her  system, 
But  if  anyone  dared  to  dispute  the  matter  with  her, 
She  could  still  produce  her  old  irrefutable  argument, 
The  names  exploding  in  the  unaccustomed  ear, 
"Very  well,  then— but  how  do  you  account 
For  Omsk 
Tomsk 

And  Tobolsk?" 


COUNTESS   REPLICA 

Countess  Ripacotta  ""' 

Lived  on  a  table— 

I  do  not  mean  to  insinuate  by  roulette  or  baccarat. 
No,  she  had  become  an  antique  dealer  of  a  very  special  kind, 

The  amateur  as  expert: 

During  the  whole  year 
She  sold  only  one— and  apparently  always  the  same— object, 
But  at  the  disposal  of  this  phoenix 

Nobody  could  approach  her  in  virtuosity. 
In  brief,  she  lived  on  a  table— 

—The  Ripacotta  table,  of  unique  pattern  and  renown, 

At  which  Dante  had  sat. 

The  Countess,  by  birth  American, 

Had  married  the  handsome  head  of  a  famous  Italian  family, 

Which  union  had  impoverished  her. 
Now  a  widow,  and  ideal  image  of  an  Italian  Contessa, 
White  hair,  soft  voice,  and  features  delicate, 
She  never  looked  any  older 

—Or  any  younger. 

In  the  enticing  month  of  April 

She  would  be  sure  to  meet 

Old  friends  in  the  street, 
And  would  end  her  lively  chatter  of  long  ago  in  Ohio 
By  exclaiming 

"Why,  my  dear,  you've  never  been  to  see  my  table,  have  you; 

You  must  come  and  see  my  table,  all  my  friends  do. 

I  don't  know  how  long  we  shall  be  able  to  keep  it. 

—All  right,  then,  tomorrow  at  five,  at  the  Palazzo." 

The  next  evening  the  table  would  be  gone 

But  only  for  one  night. 
In  the  morning,  it  would  be  back, 

Waiting  for  next  year, 
Or  one  so  like  it  as  to  lend  support 
To  the  nickname,  Countess  Replica. 

It  never  looked  any  younger 
Or  any  older— 
But  it  outlived  the  Contessa. 


WHAT    BECAME    OF    BUSTER? 


What  became  of  Buster?  .  .  . 

What  became  of  Waring 

Is  of  little  account 

Beside  what  became  of  Buster, 
Buster,  fat  but  snapping  with  energy  like  a  cracker. 


FLORENCE:     AT     THE     VILLA     JERNYNGHAM 


71 


What  became  of  Buster 

Who  put  parents  in  a  fluster 

As  he  spun  and  sung  and  flung  and  tumbled  round  the  golden  garden 
Or  somersaulted,  giving  high,  shrieks  and  whistling  on  two  fingers 
Or  turned  cart-wheels  or  rumbled  into  the  library 

To  read  the  Paris  Edition  of  the  New  York  Herald, 
Drumming  on  the  wooden  table, 
Then  tornadoed  up  the  stairs  into  the  room  above 
And  slammed  out  on  the  piano  a  march  by  Sousa, 
What  became  of  Buster? 

Lean,  sullen,  sallow,  dehydrated,  and  dyspeptic 
He  turned  into  a  business  executive 
Made  so  much  money  that  he  died  at  forty; 
That  is  what  became  of  Buster 

—Nothing,  nothing  happened  to  Buster, 
Nothing  at  all. 
Or  he  made  a  different  fortune,  and  at  fifty 
Joined  the  ranks  of  Alcoholics  Anonymous  — 
That's  what  became  of  Buster 
Nothing, 

Nothing  at  all. 


What  became  of  Buster, 

Who  put  parents  in  a  fluster 
As  he  spun  and  sung  and  flung  and  tumbled  round  the  garden 

Or  somersaulted,  giving  high  shrieks  and  whistling  on  two  fingers 
Under  the  Italian  sun, 
What  became  of  Buster? 

His  skeleton  stood  for  a  year 
In  a  thicket  of  barbed  wire 
On  a  ridge  in  France— 
That's  what  became  of  Buster, 
Nothing  happened  to  Buster, 
Nothing  at  all. 

What  became  of  Buster 

Who  put  parents  in  a  fluster, 
As  he  spun  and  sung  and  flung  and  tumbled  round  the  garden 

Or  somersaulted,  giving  high  shrieks  or  whistling  on  two  fingers 
Under  the  Italian  sun— 
What  became  of  Buster? 

He  devoted  his  life  to  building  aircraft, 

So  as  to  promote  peace 

By  bringing  foreign  nations 

Nearer  to  each  other, 

And  his  only  son  was  killed  flying 

In  the  Second  World  War— 

That's  what  happened  to  Buster 
—Nothing  became  of  Buster, 
Nothing, 

Nothing  at  all. 


mm* 


Part  III:  Concluding  a  Series  by 
RALPH   E.   LAPP 

Drawings  by  Ben  Shahn 


^Mm 


The  Voyage  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 


How  the  "ashes  of  death"  touched  the  lives 

of  many  unsuspecting  people — including 

diplomats,  California  canners,  a  fisherman's 

daughters,  Lewis  Strauss,  and  perhaps 

(in  the  end  yet  to  come)  everybody  else. 

TH  E  testing  of  an  American  atomic  bomb 
at  Bikini,  on  March  1,  1954,  had  unfor- 
tunate echoes  in  Japan.  The  crewmen  of  a 
Japanese  fishing  vessel,  the  Lucky  Dragon,  which 
had  been  near  the  danger  area  and  had  under- 
gone a  strange  fall  of  dust  from  the  sky,  were  dis- 
covered to  be  suffering  from  radiation  sickness. 
In  the  fish  markets,  which  provide  most  of  the 
protein  for  Japan's  diet,  many  tuna  from  the 
Pacific  were  found  to  be  radioactive,  which 
caused  people  to  stop  buying  and  prices  to  drop 
disastrously. 

These  were  topics  of  great  public  concern  but 
also  great  ignorance,  and  so  many  contradictory 
statements  were  made  about  them  that  Japan's 
Foreign  Minister  Katsuo  Okazaki  told  the  Diet: 
"Some  say  eating  fish  is  dangerous.  Others  con- 
tend it  is  harmless.  Some  say  10  per  cent  of  the 
victims  will  die.  Others  aver  the  injuries  are 
slight.  Such  conflicting  statements  only  serve  to 
cause  anxiety." 

It  was  unfortunate  that  the  accident  at  Bikini 
involved  two  big  A's— Atomic  and  American, 
both  of  which  evoked  strong  sentiment  in  con- 


quered and  occupied  Japan.  Communist-domi- 
nated labor  unions  painted  a  very  black  picture 
of  the  bomb  tests,  claiming  that  they  would 
"doom  the  Japanese  nation  to  ruin."  Japanese 
officials  treated  the  incident  with  restraint. 

News  of  what  had  happened  to  the  Lucky 
Dragon  was  played  up  on  the  front  pages  of 
American  newspapers  on  March  17.  But  the 
question  of  the  radioactive  tuna  fish  was  subse- 
quently given  little  space  in  the  American  press, 
and  the  injuries  to  the  fishermen  were  mainly 
mentioned  through  comments  by  U.  S.  poli- 
ticians. The  New  York  Times  ran  photos  of  an 
injured  crewman  and  printed  a  chart  showing 
that  the  Lucky  Dragon  had  been  well  outside 
the  danger  zone  around  the  Eniwetok-Bikini 
Proving  Grounds.  But  in  general  the  reporting 
of  the  incident  in  American  newspapers  gave  no 
conception   of  its  importance  to  the  Japanese. 

President  Eisenhower  became  involved  on 
March  24,  1954,  in  the  course  of  a  weekly  press 
conference.  To  a  question  from  George  E.  Her- 
man, reporter  for  the  Columbia  Broadcasting 
System,  the  President  replied  (in  the  third  person 
form  then  approved  by  the  White  House): 

It  was  quite  clear  that  this  time  something 
must  have  happened  which  we  had  never 
experienced  before,  and  must  have  surprised 
and  astonished  the  scientists.  And  very  prop- 
erly, the  United  States  had  to  take  precautions 
that  had  never  occurred  to  them  before. 

Now,  in  the  meantime,  he  knew  nothing 

©  1958  by  Ralph  E.  Lapp 


THE     VOYAGE     OF     THE     LUCKY    DRAGON 


73 


of  the  details  of  this  case.  It  was  one  of  the 
things  that  Admiral  Strauss  was  looking  up, 
but  it  had  been  reported  to  him  that  reports 
were  far  more  serious  than  actual  results  jus- 
tified. 

After  the  President's  press  conference  the 
Atomic  Energy  Commission  released  a  detailed 
statement  which  concluded: 

The  opinion  of  the  Atomic  Energy  Com- 
mission scientific  staff  based  on  long-term 
studies  of  fish  in  the  presence  of  radioactivity 
is  that  there  is  negligible  hazard,  if  any,  in 
the  consumption  of  fish  caught  in  the  Pacific 
Ocean  outside  the  immediate  test  area  subse- 
quent to  tests.  .  .  .  Any  radioactivity  collected 
in  the  test  area  would  become  harmless  within 
a  few  miles  .  .  .  and  completely  undetectable 
within  500  miles  or  less.  .  .  . 

In  Japan  the  American  Ambassador,  John  M. 
Allison,  issued  a  similar  statement.  It  evoked 
angry  comment  from  leading  Japanese  scientists. 
Professor  Yashushi  Nishiwaki  of  Osaka  Uni- 
versity made  a  radio  broadcast  in  which  he 
stated:  "I  don't  know  which  Japanese  scientists 
co-operated  in  making  Allison's  statement,  but 
the  radioactivity  we  have  detected  was  certainly 
not  negligible."  In  a  Tokyo  broadcast  Professor 
Mituo  Taketani  of  St.  Paul  University  snapped: 
"Let's  send  the  highly  contaminated  fish  to  Mr. 
Allison  and  have  him  eat  it." 

The  official  AEC  reassurance  that  fish  could 
be  eaten  safely  did  not  stem  the  rising  tide  of 
fish  condemnations  in  Japan,  nor  did  it  restore 
confidence  among  buyers  in  the  fish  markets.  On 
March  27  the  Koei  Maru  (Radiant  Glory)  put 
into  the  thriving  port  of  Misaki  with  thirty-seven 
tons  of  tuna  which  was  found  to  be  radioactive 
above  the  level  established  by  the  Ministry  of 
Health  and  Welfare.  Japanese  officials  had  issued 
a  temporary  "danger  level"  (in  reality,  a  "worry 
level")  corresponding  to  100  counts  per  minute 
for  a  Geiger  counter  held  four  inches  away  from 
the  fish.  So  far  as  the  Japanese  people  were 
concerned,  the  numerical  value  of  100  was  not 
too  important.  They  looked  upon  the  situation 
in  an  all-or-none  light.  Either  the  fish  was  radio- 
active (and  therefore  dangerous  to  health)  or  it 
was  non-radioactive  (and  safe  to  eat).  Would  the 
situation  have  been  any  different  in  the  United 
States? 

Indeed,  experience  soon  showed  that  it  would 
not  have  been.  Shortly  after  the  contamination 
of  fish  became  news,  American  dealers  asked  the 
Japanese  to  observe  restrictions  of  a  rather  tech- 
nical nature,  calling  for  the  fish  to  be  examined 


closer  than  four  inches  and  for  detailed  inspec- 
tion around  the  gills.  Apparently  importers  did 
not  want  even  100  counts  per  minute.  This  dis- 
tressed the  Japanese  tuna  men,  who  felt  that 
Americans  were  setting  up  a  double  standard. 
On  one  hand  we  asserted  there  was  no  danger 
and  strongly  implied  that  the  Japanese  were  un- 
realistic about  radioactive  contamination  of  fish. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  rejected  even  slightly 
contaminated  tuna  for  our  own  consumption. 

The  West  Coast  tuna  canneries,  most  of  which 
are  concentrated  in  California,  were  alerted. 
Records  of  the  Food  and  Drug  Administration 
show  that  two  radioactive  fish  were  picked  up  at 
one  cannery.  No  details  other  than  that  the 
"radioactivity  was  insignificant"  are  available, 
but  it  is  known  that  a  secret  meeting  took  place 
between  representatives  of  the  tuna  industry, 
the  Food  and  Drug  Administration,  the  Atomic 
Energy  Commission,  and  the  State  Department. 
An  acceptable  level  of  radioactivity  was  agreed 
upon  at  this  meeting  but  the  level  was  classified 
as  "confidential"  and  not  released  to  the  public. 
This  degree  of  secrecy  is  an  interesting  com- 
mentary on  how  government  officials  viewed 
public  reaction  to  a  tuna  scare  in  the  U.  S. 

"inadvertent   trespass" 

NEWSMEN  in  Japan  have  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  the  most  aggressive  in  the 
world.  The  competition  between  rival  papers  is 
so  keen  that  the  leading  dailies  employ  stagger- 
ing numbers  of  reporters.  Stung  by  the  scoop  of 
the  Yomiuri,  which  had  the  original  Lucky 
Dragon  story  all  to  itself,  rival  papers  determined 
that  there  would  be  no  repetition  and  assigned 
large  numbers  of  staffmen  to  cover  the  radio- 
active contamination  of  fish.  Persistent  reporters 
also  hounded  scientists,  soliciting  comments,  at 
any  hour  of  dav  or  night,  on  each  new  facet  of 
the  Lucky  Dragon  incident.  One  might  say  that 
they  almost  haunted  Professor  Kenjiro  Kimura's 
laboratory  at  Tokyo  University,  where  an 
analysis  of  the  Bikini  ashes  was  being  made. 

Word  finally  came  from  Dr.  Kimura's  labora- 
tory that  some  of  the  radioactive  substances  in 
the  ashes  had  been  identified.  Elements  like  tel- 
lurium, niobium,  and  lanthanum  were  strange 
and  unknown,  but  one  word  struck  home.  It  was 
strontium-90.  The  deadliest  of  all  radioactive 
substances  had  been  identified  from  the  pinch  of 
dust  which  had  come  to  rest  on  the  decks  of  the 
Lucky  Dragon!  A  collective  shudder  ran  through 
millions  of  Japanese.  Strontium-90,  a  chemical 
cousin  to  calcium,  gives  off  no  penetrating  radia- 


74 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


tion.  Yet  it  seeks  out  the  bone  and  deposits  there, 
"living"  for  a  long  time— half  of  its  radioactivity 
would  still   remain   after  twenty-eight  years. 

Against  this  background  of  mounting  anxiety, 
the  Japanese  government  issued  a  statement  to 
the  U.  S.  Ambassador,  outlining  the  results  of  its 
[ > 1 1  J i 1 1 1 i 1 1 . 1 1  \  investigation  of  the  Lucky  Dragon 
accident.  This  official  document  was  obviously 
a  first  step  in  negotiations  for  compensation  of 
the  Lucky  Dragon  fishermen,  which  Japanese 
newspapers  kept  demanding.  But  while  the 
negotiations  were  under  way,  Congressmen 
returned  from  viewing  another  H-bomb  test  in 
the  Pacific  and  it  was  rumored  in  American 
weekly  magazines  that  a  superbomb,  the  equal 
of  45  million  tons  of  TNT,  would  soon  be 
exploded.  This  evoked  from  India's  Jawaharlal 
Nehru  a  plea  that  the  tests  in  the  Pacific  be 
stopped.  "I  believe  it  is  proposed  to  have  a 
bigger  show  in  the  middle  of  April,"  said  the 
Prime  Minister.  "This  only  reminds  me  of  the 
genie  that  came  out  of  the  bottle,  ultimately 
swallowing  the  man."    Many  Japanese  agreed. 

As  this  storm  of  controversy  was  brewing  across 
the  Pacific,  Admiral  Lewis  L.  Strauss,  Chairman 
of  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission  and  the  Presi- 
dential personal  adviser  on  atomic  matters,  re- 
leased a  lengthy  statement,  of  which  the  follow- 
ing excerpts  are  pertinent: 

Warning  Area:  ".  .  .  there  are  many  instances 
where  accidents  or  near  accidents  have  resulted 
from  inadvertent  trespass  in  such  warning  areas. 
The  very  size  of  them  makes  it  impossible  to 
fence  or  police  them." 

The  Lucky  Dragon:  "Japanese  fishing  trawler, 
the  Fortunate  Dragon,  appears  to  have  been 
missed  by  the  search  but,  based  on  a  statement 
attributed  to  her  skipper,  to  the  effect  that  he 
saw    the   flash   of   the   explosion   and   heard    the 


concussion  six  minutes  later,  it  must  have 
well  within  the  danger  area." 

The  Japanese  Fishermen:  "The  situation  | 
respect  to  the  twenty-three  Japanese  fisherm 
less  certain  clue  to  the  fact  that  our  people  i 
not  yet  been  permitted  by  the  Japanese  aut 
ties  to  make  a  proper  clinical  examination. 
interesting  to  note,  however,  that  reports  w 
have  recently  come  through  to  us  indicate , 
the  blood  count  of  these  men  is  comparabll 
that    of    our    weather-station    personnel, 
lesions  observed  are  thought  to  be  due  td 
chemical    activity   of   the  converted   materia 
the  coral  rather  than  to  radioactivity,  since  t 
lesions  are  said  to  be  already  healing." 

Contaminated  Fish:  "With  respect  to) 
stories  concerning  widespread  contaminatioj 
tuna  and  other  fish  as  a  result  of  the  tests] 
facts  do  not  confirm  them.  The  only  cont 
nated  fish  discovered  were  those  in  the  open 
of  the  Japanese  trawler.  Commissioner  Craw 
of  the  United  States  Food  and  Drug  Admini 
tion  has  advised  us:  'Our  inspectors  founc 
instance  of  radioactivity  in  any  shipments  ol 
from  Pacific  waters.  .  .  .  There  is  no  occasion 
for  public  apprehension  about  this  type  of 
tamination.' " 

Conceivably,  one  might  explain  the 
Chairman's  extraordinary  remarks  as  base< 
insufficient  data  or  technical  misunderstanc 
However,  he  has  never  retracted  them,  ai 
year  afterwards  he  told  the  Joint  Committe 
Atomic  Energy:  "It  is  interesting  in  rerea 
the  statement  to  see  that  it  does  comport 
stantially  with  what  we  have  since  learned,  j 
is  to  say,  there  are  no  glaring  inaccuracies  in 
At  this  point  the  Admiral  paused  and  ad 
"There  are  lacunae  of  course."  That  is,  t 
are  omissions.  But  it  was  not  the  omiss 
that  troubled  the  Japanese.  It  was  the  obi 
insinuation  that  their  fishermen  had  beei 
fault  but  had  not  been  injured,  and  that  fis 
the  Japanese  markets  were  not  radioactive 
of  this  they  knew  to  be  untrue. 

While  the  rift  between  the  two  nai 
widened,  the  attentions  of  the  Japanese  tu 
to  the  two  hospitals  in  Tokyo  to  which  the  fi 
men  from  the  Lucky  Dragon  had  been  ti 
ferred.  All  of  the  men  were  suffering  to  a 
degree  from  a  depressed  level  of  white  and 
blood  cells.  To  combat  their  anemia,  the 
were  given  repeated  transfusions,  and  antibii 
were  administered  to  bolster  their  resistant 

Sexual    cells    are    also    extremely   sensitive 
radiation,     and     during     April     and     May 
spermatozoa    counts   of   the    fishermen    droj 


THE     VOYAGE     OF     THE     LUCKY     DRAGON 


75 


precipitously.  For  the  moment  they  were  com- 
pletely sterile. 

As  their  physical  condition  declined,  they  be- 
came more  and  more  worried— especially  by  the 
sensational,  and  sometimes  distorted,  accounts 
I  of  their  illness  which  appeared  in  the  press.  One 
newspaper  article,  purporting  to  represent  an 
open  letter  from  Japanese. to  American  doctors, 
charged  the  United  States  with  failing  to  answer 
requests  for  advice  on  how  to  treat  the  men. 

Actually,  the  United  States  made  antibiotics 
freely  available  and  would  never  have  hesitated 
to  supply  anything  the  Japanese  doctors  re- 
quested—with two  exceptions.  One  was  adequate 
knowledge  to  treat  the  effects  of  radiation,  for 
this  was  beyond  anyone's  power,  and  the  other 
was  the  answer  to  the  riddle  of  the  ashes— which 
was  within  our  power  but  which  came  under  the 
dark  shadow  of  "national  security." 

As  spring  came  to  Tokyo,  the  patients  were 
encouraged  by  the  healing  of  their  skin  lesions 
and  the  regrowth  of  body  hair.  This  was  a  good 
sign,  for  with  near-lethal  doses  of  radiation  there 
may  be  permanent  impairment  of  hair  growth. 
It  looked  as  though  they  had  passed  the  low 
point  and  were  now  on  the  upswing.  All  Japan 
breathed  a  little  easier,  too,  when  the  United 
States  announced  in  mid-May  that  the  1954 
Bikini  bomb  tests  in  the  Pacific  (known  as  the 
"Castle"  series)  had  been  concluded. 

THE     RIDDLE     OF     THE     ASHES 

\\  /HAT  were  the  "ashes  of  death"— the 
VV  shi  no  hat— which  had  fallen  from  the 
skies  upon  the  decks  of  the  Lucky  Dragon}  Three 
times  this  question  was  put  to  American  repre- 
sentatives by  Japanese  doctors  and  scientists,  and 
twice  it  went  unanswered.  The  third  time,  a 
U.  S.  scientist,  Mr.  Merril  Eisenbud,  director  of 
the  AEC's  Health  and  Safety  Laboratory,  made 
the  enigmatic  reply:  "Ask  Dr.  Kimura." 

Dr.  Kenjiro  Kimura,  a  brilliant  radiochemist, 
was  no  newcomer  to  atomic  research.  When  the 
sensational  news  was  flashed  around  the  world 
in  1939  that  the  uranium  atom  had  been  split, 
he  had  teamed  up  with  the  great  Japanese 
physicist  Nishina;  they  readily  split  the  atom,  a 
simple  trick  once  you  knew  that  it  could  be  done, 
and  in  addition  they  identified  some  new  frag- 
ments of  the  split.  On  bombarding  a  sample  of 
natural  uranium,  the  Japanese  discovered  that 
they  had  produced  an  entirely  new,  hitherto 
unknown,  type  of  uranium.  They  named  it 
uranium-237. 

When  Dr.   Kimura  and   his   staff   tackled   the 


job  of  analyzing  the  Lucky  Dragon  ash,  he  had 
no  doubt  that  most  of  its  radioactivity  was  due  to 
the  split  atoms  of  uranium.  Though  he  could 
not  tell  from  his  research  whether  the  atomic 
fragments  were  uranium-235  or  uranium-238,  he 
never  seriously  doubted  that  they  belonged  to 
the  former.  At  that  time  only  uranium-235  was 
known  to  be  useful  in  a  bomb.  But  after  he  had 
made  several  preliminary  reports,  he  received  a 
very  helpful,  yet  somewhat  puzzling  letter  from 
Merril  Eisenbud.  It  contained  the  following 
paragraph  on  the  composition  of  the  ash: 

We  have  found  that  the  radioisotopes  pres- 
ent in  the  ash  are  consistent  with  the  data 
given  in  "Nuclei  Formed  in  Fission*,"  pub- 
lished in  the  Journal  of  the  American  Chem- 
ical Society,  volume  68,  page  2411,  November 
1946.  The  curve  given  for  slow  neutron  fission 
is  applicable  to  the  ash  except  for  atomic 
masses  103  through  130.  The  important 
fission  products  are  in  maximal  portions  of 
the  curve  and  can  be  read  quantitatively 
within  experimental  error. 

This  information  confirmed  what  Dr.  Kimura 
already  knew,  but  the  sentence  about  atomic 
masses  103  through  130  caused  him  to  wrinkle 
his  brow.  Why  should  these  atoms  be  out  of 
line?  What  kind  of  bomb  had  the  Americans 
developed  which  altered  the  very  nature  of  the 
fission  process? 

When  the  most  urgent  analytical  work  had 
been  finished,  Professor  Kimura  turned  his  atten- 
tion to  a  chemical  solution  which  contained  "the 
uranium  fraction,"  that  is,  the  various  forms  of 
uranium  which  were  chemically  separated  from 
the  ashes.  It  exhibited  unusually  high  radio- 
activity. All  the  usual  forms  of  uranium  were 
long-lived,  and  therefore  should  not  produce 
many  counts,  but  this  solution  caused  the  Geiger 
counter  to  chatter  vigorously.  Careful  processing 
of  the  solution  showed  that  it  was  not  mixed 
with  other  elements,  and  examination  of  the 
radioactivity  showed  that  half  of  it  dissipated 
in  about  a  week.  Could  it  be  uranium-237?  But, 
if  so,  what  was  it  doing  in  the  ashes? 

At  the  end  of  May,  Professor  Kimura  traveled 
to  the  beautiful  city  of  Kyoto  to  attend  the  pro- 
fessional chemical  society  meetings  there.  At  a 
Japanese  inn,  prior  to  the  meeting,  he  discussed 
his  data  with  other  scientists  and  decided  to 
announce  his  discovery.  The  next  day,  address- 
ing several  hundred  scientists,  the  discoverer  of 
U-237  told  of  his  research  on  the  Bikini  ash. 
"It  was  truly  a  source  of  profound  emotion,"  he 
began,   "when,  during  the  present  experiments, 


76 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


l  237  was  unexpectedly  again  encountered."  A 
hush  Milled  ovei  the  group,  and  then  a  numbei 
dI  scientists  broke  the  silence,  murmuring  to 
others:  "What  does  ii  mean?"  After  the  presen- 
tation, they  asked  Dr.  Kimura  and  he  replied: 
"I  am  not  sine." 

When  he  returned  to  Tokyo,  Dr.  Kimura 
consulted  with  a  fellow  scientist,  Professoi 
Mituo  Taketani,  the  physicist  at  St.  Paul  Uni- 
versity in  Tokyo.  Dr.  Taketani,  a  rather  high- 
strung  man  who  will  refuse  to  attend  a  con- 
ference il  cigarette  smoking  is  permitted,  pointed 
out  that  the  only  way  to  produce  uranium-237 
was  to  bombard  uranium-238  with  very  high 
energy  neutrons.  He  estimated  that  a  "few  hun- 
dred kilograms  ol  uranium"  must  have  fissioned 
in  the  Bikini  explosion.  This  would  mean  that 
a  good  fraction  ol  a  ton  ol  uranium  was  in- 
volved, not  rare  and  expensive  uranium-235,  but 
cheap  and  abundant  natural  uranium.  If  this 
was  true,  the  Bikini  bomb  ushered  in  an  era  of 
bombs  without  limit  in  power— bombs  which 
would  produce  such  a  fearful  radioactive  fall-out 
that  their  ashes  could  kill  people  a  hundred 
miles  down-wind  of  the  explosions. 

The  conclusion  that  the  Bikini  bomb  was  not 
a  pure  hydrogen  bomb  but  a  weapon  which 
tapped  the  energy  of  natural  uranium  was  also 
reached  by  Dr.  Nishiwaki  in  his  laboratory  at 
Osaka.  Actually,  he  had  hit  upon  the  correct 
solution  soon  after  he  started  studying  the  con- 
tamination ol  Bikini  fish,  joking  with  some  of 
his  colleagues,  Dr.  Nishiwaki  said:  "Maybe  there 
is  a  good  natural  uranium  mine  at  Bikini."  It 
"was  a  wild  guess,  but  oddly  enough  the  basic 
principle  involved  was  correct,  except  that  in- 
stead of  a  uranium  mine  on  the  Bikini  island 
there  was  a  mantle  of  uranium  wrapped  around 
the  bomb. 

Thus,  in  the  spring  of  1954,  Japanese  scien- 
tists had  managed  to  discover  the  secret  about 
the  bomb  which  the  United  States  was  still  trying 
to  safeguard.  Suddenly,  it  became  clear  to  Dr. 
Kimura  why  Merril  Eisenbud  had  worded  his 
letter  of  April  8  so  carefully.  Eisenbud  had  tried 
very  hard  to  tell  the  Japanese  professors  as  much 
as   he  could  without  violating  security. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Japanese  scientists  would 
discover  the  truth  once  they  started  analyzing 
the  ashes.  The  scientist  who  originally  found 
uranium-237  could  scarcely  be  expected  to  over- 
look it  when  it  was  put  right  under  his  nose. 
This  being  the  case,  the  United  States  would 
have  shown  itself  in  a  much  better  light  if  it 
had  come  out  in  the  open  early  in  March  and 
told  the   Japanese   the  lull  nature  of  the  radio- 


active  contamination.  We  could  e\en,  in  h 
days  immediatel)  aftei  the  explosion,  have  s. e( 
ilit-  fishermen  from  its  worst  effects. 


WHAT     MIGHT     HAVE     BE] 


Til  E  Lucky  Dragon  was  not  the  only 
dusted  with  Eall-out.  A  task  force  of] 
U.S.  naval  vessels,  rendezvoused  thirty  i 
from  Bikini,  was  standing  bv  to  observe 
detonation  in  an  area  thought  to  be  sab. 
cers  aboard  the  ships  watched  the  enorn 
mushroom  cloud  as  it  dispersed  in  the  st 
sphere  and  they  noted  that  the  winds  were  j 
ing  remnants  of  the  cloud  toward  them,  j 
an  hour  later,  Geiger  counters  on  deck  startj 
react  and  orders  were  given  to  clear  the  dec! 

The  ships  were  "buttoned  up"— that  is 
hands  went  below  after  securing  the  ha^ 
and  portholes.  Even  the  ships'  ventilators 
covered.  Then  vast  quantities  of  water 
sprayed  over  the  ships  by  special  pipes  I 
nozzles,  specifically  designed  to  wash  off  rad 
tive  contamination.  The  ships  were  maneuv 
by  radar  since  the  water  spray  made  visil 
very  poor.  For  over  half  a  day,  the  crews  swe 
it  out  below  decks  in  the  tropical  heat.  Fir 
it  was  judged  safe  to  "unbutton"  the  ship 
the  men  came  out  on  deck.  Wearing  rd 
suits,  hoods,  and  masks  they  proceeded  to  a 
up  traces  of  fall-out  which  the  protective.se 
of  water  had  failed  to  wash  away. 

The  Atomic  Energy  Commission  and  De 
Department  thus  knew  within  a  few  hours 
the  March  I  test  that  something  had  gone  wi 
Within  a  few  more  hours,  Radiological  S 
Headquarters  for  the  Task  Force  had  a  good 
of  the  dimensions  and  intensity  of  the  fall 
Yet  no  warning  was  broadcast  to  ships  in 
vicinity.  Test  administrators  knew  within  ; 
more  hours  that  the  eastern  end  of  the  dzj 
zone  was  no  longer  a  proper  limit  for  sa 
Why  did  not  the  test  officials  break  radio  si; 
and  broadcast  a  general  warning  over  that] 
of  the  Pacific? 

Officials   charged    with    responsibility    for 
conduct  of  the  "Castle"  series  of  nuclear 
might  respond  that  the  area  had  been  sean 
They  had  no  reason  to  believe  any  foreign 
were   in   the   vicinity.    Yet    no   one   aboard 
Lucky  Dragon  either  on  February  28  or  Ma 
saw  or  heard  any  aircraft,   ft  seems  highly  ] 
able  that  the  lips  of  test  officials  were  scale 
the  same  security  precautions  which  attende 
previous    tests.      An    announcement    made 
next  day  said  nothing  about  an  accident. 


it 


H 


I: 


tl 


THE     VOYAGE     OF     THE     LUCKY     DRAGON 


77 


Had  the  Lucky  Dragon  received  word  on 
March  1  that  there  had  been  an  accident,  Kubo- 
yama  could  have  radioed  for  assistance.  The  sim- 
plest of  instructions  would  have  allowed  the 
fishermen  to  decontaminate  themselves  and  their 
boat.  The  Task  Force  could  have  sent  destroyers 
to  the  scene  and  removed  the  men  from  their 
hazardous  home.  As  the  timetable  of  radioac- 
tivity makes  clear,  the  dose  to  the  fishermen 
could  have  been  cut  in  half.  This  is  all  "what 
might  have  been,"  for  there  was  no  news  of  the 
Bikini  accident  until  many  days  later,  when  the 
damage  had  already  been  done. 

To  Icok  at  the  other  side  of  the  coin,  why  did 
not  the  fishermen  radio  for  help?  First,  no  one 
on  board  suspected  at  the  time  that  the  ash  was 
dangerous.  Having  left  the  area,  the  men  aboard 
the  little  fishing  boat  felt  that  they  were  safe. 
Second,  the  fishermen  were  terrified  of  what 
might  happen  to  them  if  they  were  taken  into 
custody  by  Americans.  This  may  sound  incred- 
ible to  American  ears,  but  one  must  remember 
the  isolation  and  gullibility  of  the  Japanese 
fishermen.  Third,  no  one  aboard  had  acute 
enough  symptoms  to  jolt  the  boat's  command 
into  seeking  medical  aid. 

In  the  same  realm  of  speculation,  it  is  inter- 
esting to  note  that  had  the  fishermen  headed 
north  immediately  after  the  detonation,  as  the 
Chief  Engineer  desired,  they  would  have  es- 
caped most  of  the  fall-out.  As  it  happened,  they 
were  on  the  northern  edge  of  the  immense  cigar- 
shaped  pattern  and  they  could  have  soon  been 
out  of  it  had  they  proceeded  north  at  full  speed. 
They  probably  would  have  received  some  con- 
tamination but  it  would  not  have  required  months 
of  hospitalization.  They  could  have  saved,  had 
they  known  it,  Aikichi  Kuboyama's  life. 


T 


DUST    IN     THE     WIND 

H  E  fishermen  were  hopeful  that  before 
the  summer  was  over  they  would  be  al- 
lowed to  leave  the  hospital  and  return  to  their 
homes  in  Yaizu.  Some  spoke  of  returning  to  the 
sea  again,  but  others  announced  a  preference  for 
staying  on  land.  Kuboyama,  who  loved  sea  life, 
startled  his  companions  by  asserting  that  he 
would  open  up  a  sake  shop  and  go  into  business 
for  himself.  His  proposal,  made  repeatedly, 
evoked  the  uniform  reply:  "Almost  all  the  sake 
in  your  shop  will  be  drunk  by  you." 

Doctor  Toshiyuki  Kumatori  had  developed  a 
strong  friendship  for  Kuboyama.  He  recognized 
that  the  radioman  was  the  most  intelligent  of 
the  crew  and  he  would  often  discuss  rather  tech- 


nical details  with  him,  with  the  result  that 
Kuboyama  became  well  acquainted  with  his  own 
case  history.  He  knew,  for  example,  that  his 
white  blood  cell  count  had  dipped  to  1,900  in 
April  and  that  his  bone  marrow  count  had  shown 
a  precipitous  drop-off. 

As  he  wrote  in  a  letter  dated  April  17  to  his 
friend  at  the  Yaizu  wireless  shop,  "The  best  way 
to  cure  this  disease,  I  was  told,  is  by  blood  trans- 
fusions. The  older  the  person,  the  stronger  [they 
are]  affected.  The  reason  why  this  is  so  is  that  the 
blood-making  ability  in  the  marrow  of  the  bone 
is  not  as  strong  as  in  younger  men." 

Kuboyama  was  much  concerned  about  the 
health  of  his  companions,  almost  all  of  whom 
were  bachelors.  He  told  his  nephew  Shiro:  "I 
might  say  that  I  could  be  satisfied  with  the  three 
daughters  that  I  already  have,  but  you  young 
bachelors  could  probably  not  have  children  in 
the  future  if  you  get  married.  That's  the  prob- 
lem." He  was  incensed  when  he  learned  that  a 
girl  who  had  promised  to  marry  one  of  the  crew 
broke  off  the  romance  after  the  accident. 

Once  a  television  set  was  installed  in  Room 
311,  Kuboyama  became  a  passionate  TV  fan. 
Somehow  or  other  he  always  managed  to  get  the 
best  spot  to  view  the  screen,  especially  when 
Sumoo  wrestling  matches  were  televised.  He  read 
the  newspapers  daily  to  keep  up  on  the  wrestlers 
and  followed  the  matches  avidly.  But  neither 
television  nor  newspapers  were  enough  to  occupy 
Kuboyama.  He  asked  the  head  nurse  to  teach 
him  how  to  knit,  and  received  permission  to 
knit  for  one  hour  each  day.  At  first  his  hands 
were  awkward  and  he  was  all  thumbs  trying  to 
handle  the  knitting  needles.  But  he  stuck  to  it 
and  two  months  later  finished  a  sweater  for  his 
eldest  girl  Miyako,  to  whom  he  wrote: 

Thank  you  for  your  letter.  You're  fine,  aren't 
you?  Papa  is  greatly  relieved  to  know  this.  As 
it  is  getting  warmer  day  after  day,  you  will 
be  going  to  the  seashore  or  river  to  play.  Be 
careful  not  to  be  washed  away  by  the  waves  or 
the  water.  Take  care  not  to  make  your  sisters 
Yasuko  and  Sayoko  cry.  And  study  hard  and 
wait  until  your  papa  comes  home. 

Late  in  June,  Kuboyama  experienced  a  moder- 
ately severe  attack  of  jaundice  and  complained  of 
pain  in  his  liver.  In  writing  to  a  friend  in  July, 
he  described  his  yellow  color  as  "rather  strong 
and  fifteen  times  as  much  as  in  an  ordinary  per- 
son." He  wrote  that  he  felt  dull  and  had  no 
appetite.  "That  is  a  great  pain  to  me,"  he  com- 
plained. Though  two-thirds  of  the  crewmen  had 
jaundice,    the   others   soon   recovered   from   the 


78 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


attacks.  But  Kuboyama's  persisted  and  his  white 
blood  cell  count  did  not  go  up.  But  he  hoped 
that  when  the  weather  improved  and  got  cooler, 
he  might  recover  and  go  back  to  Yaizu. 

Kuboyama  was  very  proud  of  the  sweater  lie 
knitted  for  his  first  child  and  he  bought  some 
yarn  for  a  second  one.  He  started  knitting  the 
red  garment  and  when  his  wife  came  to  see  him 
he  smiled  and  said:  "Well,  I've  got  to  knit  one 
more,  don't  I?"  However,  as  he  became  sicker, 
progress  on  his  knitting  slowed  and  then  stopped. 
During  August  his  condition  steadi